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FRESH WATERS 

AND OTHER STORIES 


By the Same Author 


The Vanishing Men 
Potential Russia 
The Velvet Black 
The Hands of Nara 


E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 





FRESH WATERS 

AND OTHER STORIES 


BY 

RICHARD WASHBURN CHILD 

»i 

AUTHOR OF “THE VANISHING MEN,” ETC. 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 





Copyright, 1924 

BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 


All Rights Reserved 


,04 il* 
f N 


NOV-8 74 


Printed in the United State® of America 



CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Fresh Waters. t . 1 

The Lure. . : . 23 

Here's How. t .. 51 

The Man with the Metal Face ......... 84 

The Gorilla .............. 113 

The Screen. 138 

Keats Shadd. 160 

The Playthings. 185 

A Thirty Thousand Dollar Slap ....... 213 

A Strain of Blood. 233 

A Story for a Certain Lady . . . , . .251 

The Eyes of the Gazelle ......... 274 













FRESH WATERS 

AND OTHER STORIES 




FRESH WATERS 
AND OTHER STORIES 


FRESH WATERS 

His daughter asked permission to go too. 

She was a delicately molded child in whose face a trace 
of sadness was reminiscent of her mother, who had died 
long ago. Thirteen nearly—on the verge of womanhood. 

He looked steadily at her. She was his own, like a 
piece of property, and he rejoiced in the ownership of 
such loveliness as he would have rejoiced, in lesser meas¬ 
ure, in the perfection of a colt bred in his stables. She 
was an eyeful; she was his, living, ripening. Kind¬ 
ness he knew how to give. He was always tender with 
her, particularly when he dismissed her in his indulgent, 
playful way and sent her to the eternal governess—a just 
and unimaginative woman—Miss Eritrea Carb. 

“Oh, too wet!” Bascom told her, putting his arm about 
her little shoulders lovingly and playfully. 

There had been a thunder-shower, booming and tor- 
renting, so that the two hundred from the colony who had 
come over to see the dancing on the lawn between the 
cypresses, had scurried to their motors, leaving behind an 
afternoon for the benefit of some charity or other. Only 
the week-end party at Bascom’s remained, and most of 
them were playing bridge in the library while the sun was 
forcing itself out again into a world made crystal-clear, 
.bright blue and deep green, by the rain and wind. 

“I’d like to swim with you,” his daughter Anna said 


2 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

Leaning back on the overstuffed couch in his big library 
he exchanged glances with Miss Muriel Hendricks. Anna 
Bascom, quick, of blue, expectant eyes, saw, felt herself 
excluded from some unknown world, tenanted only by 
her father and this young American who had lived so 
long abroad, and who could look so desirably like a mix¬ 
ture of Cairo dancer and Russian noblewoman. She 
felt the red mounting her white, slender neck. 

“I don’t believe you’d want to do that, little A.,” her 
father said. “Come on, now! Do you?” 

“No,” she said, and went away. 

He put his brown, slender-fingered hand, palm upward, 
on the tapestried couch, and Muriel laid within it com- 
panionably and with understanding her own strong, long 
fingers, almost bony but alluring and expressive, agile 
and active, always. 

“You are so good to her, Alfred Bascom,” she said, 
using, as nearly always, his full name. 

It was nice to hear this confirmation of his own belief, 
and he pressed the hand in his conclusively. 

“So now come on for one dip,” he said in a lively 
voice. It was a different voice, and yet there was a 
trace of the same indulgence he had used toward his 
daughter. Perhaps that was because the Hendricks girl 
might have been his daughter too. In spite of her mature 
allurements, the allurements of one who can be quite 
worldly and yet keep poised, in spite of her twenty-seven 
years, there remained something about her of untouched 
youth. There was nothing second-hand in the flavor 
of her highly colored, luminous personality. She might 
have been his daughter; he was well out of youth. 

“What do you think the others will say?’’ she asked. 
It was an acceptance of his invitation, but gave to their 
little adventure the larky thrill of daring. 


Fresh Waters 3 

As they descended the stone steps leading to the sea, 
the girl looked back at the house, a great and beautiful 
country-place on the shore, just the structure one would 
expect a man like him to build, with its stone quarried 
from the red-and-gray ledges of that coast, so that it 
appeared to rise like a part of the land’s edge. “Graybles,” 
he called it. And it was well done, like all things Bascom 
did—like the immense and lucrative mining industry he 
had built, like the Morgans and the Percherons in his 
stables, like the collections of jade and Dutch masters in 
his city house, like the immense contribution he had made 
in labors exclusively given during the past five years 
to his studies in the strength and the weaknesses of 
democracies and socialistic states. 

In him was the essence of passion for self-expression; 
it found in him a man who had the character and brilliance 
not to endeavor to express himself either weakly or trivi¬ 
ally or in vain. His fingers disclosed something of the 
artist and poet, his jaw and eyes the administrator and 
fighter. The one had complemented the other. 

She knew it all vaguely. He was powerful. 

He was even powerful physically, and of this he was 
conscious as he stood straight, lean and strong, running 
the fingers of both hands through his iron-gray hair as 
he stood gazing out from the spring-board on the bathing- 
platform, at the almost painful clearness of the sea and 
rose-fired clouds of the western horizon after the storm. 
He knew that she, in her bathing-tights, perfect as she 
was in her young, soft beauty, hard and muscular and yet 
sinuous and tender, was nevertheless gazing upon him 
with sudden approval. 

He laughed like a boy, as they say, and suddenly with 
tautened sinews starting below the tanned skin of arms 
and legs, he shot out like an arrow and cut down to the 


4 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

green mystery of the depths. A moment later the girl, 
with full, joyous strokes, shaking the water from her 
bright-red rubber cap, had joined him, racing and romp¬ 
ing, toward the float. 

All the world seemed young and fresh now. The 
tinted sky, like a clear inverted bowl, covered a sea of 
bright, new color. The rocks had leaped into sharp 
outlines below the pines and cedars, and their mineral 
colors had suddenly grown bright as if to vie with the 
brilliance of green in trees and grass. Below the swim¬ 
mers, the water, like a chameleon, changed from emerald 
in front to amethyst behind them. And a little girl from 
the balcony of the great house—a mere spot of white and 
blue—waved her hand. 

When they climbed out, wet and dripping, up the slip¬ 
pery ladder of the float, there came a moment when both 
paused, drawing long breaths, as if the awe of moments 
of great joy was upon them. 

Muriel snatched off her red cap, and her hair fell in 
loose array about her white, wet shoulders. Then she 
stood looking beyond the steam-yacht, a toy of which her 
master had tired, at the fires of the horizon. Something 
in that moment when the world seemed to have been 
created for them made her say: “Let us go there.” 

She pointed with one beautiful bare arm. “Let us go 
over the edge of the world. Let us take your yacht and 
go and go and go, forever and ever and ever!” 

He was tempted to draw her into the pressure of his 
strength. Why he hesitated he could not tell himself. 
Life had slowly gone toward these hesitations, these 
restraints. It was like him to act, not impulsively but 
decisively; it was like him to seize the great moments of 
life as one seizes quickly ripened fruit to squeeze forth 


Fresh Waters 5 

the last drop of its juices. Now he suddenly heard him¬ 
self laughing the laugh of one who feels his own power 
and can wait. 

“You would have the luxury of the yacht ?” 

“Of course,” she said. “One is tossed about so in 
smaller, smellier boats.” 

The moment had gone—a moment in which the wine 
of youth had tingled in his veins. It had gone, but now 
he knew, as he had always guessed, that she—this par¬ 
ticular girl—whose skin was dark but enlivened with the 
rose-tints of flower-petals, in whose eyes dwelt the images 
not only of youth and innocence but those of the world’s 
sophistication, whose body was lithe and sentient, and 
whose mind contained the whimsicality of a princess of 
the Greek isles—she was the one who could bring back 
to him romance and the fountain of youth. 

In spite of his intellectual hungers, in spite of his 
metallic, industrial mind, Bascom had nursed within him 
all his life the hunger of the senses. He never divorced 
them from his love of the rare and perfect and beautiful. 
H 19 wife, tender and unselfish, living in the quiet, gray 
mist of her own gentleness, had never quite fed that 
yearning of his for fierceness of expression. Some¬ 
times, as they had stood together in old ruins of mighty 
palaces in antique lands, he had watched the lizards 
scurry in the brazen sunlight and recalled in his imagina¬ 
tion the women who danced to tempt a tired emperor, 
the sound of girls’ wild voices in bacchanal song, rever¬ 
berating through pagan temples where torches lit the way 
to abandon. And a wistfulness had come over him. He 
had felt himself suddenly a new member of a fraternity 
of passion, and had sighed, taken his wife’s arm affec¬ 
tionately, and strolled away toward the reality of life. 

Now there came moments, after all these years, when, 


6 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

with a shudder, he thought he could hear youth, a little 
wearily, bidding him farewell. The voice! Good-by ? 
Good-by! The old thrill gone—the treasure of youth, 
love, romance, the drama of woman, of adventure under¬ 
taken with a laugh of scorn at any account to pay—gone ? 
He denied it! All that deep store of unexpended youth? 
He denied it! He denied it with anger of soul. 

Bascom would never become a libertine; the secret 
springs of desire in him would feed only some greater, 
more dignified love. He thought of this as he dressed 
for dinner. He thought of it when, for reasons he did 
not analyze, he reverted again and again to the conclu¬ 
sion that he could have Muriel Hendricks if he wanted 
her, if he wanted to marry her, and he clung to that 
token of his power as if it were a bastile of reassurance 
against some dread assault of inevitable destiny. The 
picture sprang into his mind of his own thirsty soul, 
eager for self-expression but weary, leaning down to 
drink long, refreshing drafts of youth at springs which 
would be fed by her personality. There was no reason 
why he should not have her; everybody was talking about 
it, speculating on whether they would be engaged this 
Spring. 

Then suddenly, looking up into the mirror as he ad¬ 
justed his white broadcloth waistcoat, he saw his own 
countenance. It appeared so crestfallen, so lacking in 
happiness, in that something which the portrait in the 
library, done when he was thirty, smiled confidently forth 
upon the world. 

What was this new thing in his face? Not the frame 
above of vigorous gray hair, not the hard, youthful con¬ 
tour, not the well-shaved, well-rubbed, smooth, youthful 
skin. It was only a vague, accursed shadow—the damna- 


Fresh Waters 7 

foie mask of life once lived, lived once, not to foe lived 
again. It was the film of the downward years. 

“Ill call it back!” he said aloud to his own image. 

The portrait of his wife, cool in its light daintiness, 
looked down on him from above his desk, smiling in that 
gentleness of its immovable, eternal inscrutability—a lov¬ 
ing and indulgent, caressing and patient smile. 

Bascom looked at it with a puzzled expression upon his 
long, grave face as he turned to go to the library, whence 
there drifted up the sound of laughter, a little boisterous, 
of the men over their empty cocktail-glasses. 

“What are you trying to tell me?” he said, without sen¬ 
timent in his voice. Then he shook his head. The por¬ 
trait was so inexpressive of anything he could understand; 
he had wondered before what was in her mind as she 
had sat for it. 

In the dining-room long French windows, opened to 
the soft, balmy air of the evening, welcomed the night 
perfumes from his garden. In a pause of the merry con¬ 
versation of the women sitting straight and the men with 
heads leaning toward them, he could hear the distant 
whinny of some wakeful thoroughbred in his stables. A 
moth came precipitously in from the soft moonlight to 
cast itself into the flame of the candle and dropped in 
trivial suicide before his plate. 

Filled with a sense of contrast, of well-being, of safety, 
comfort, and assurance, he looked down the table to 
Muriel, who was smiling in a friendly manner at him 
as she pretended to listen to the youthful Senator who 
talked onto one of her marvelous shoulders. Bascom 
sighed and took a long draft of smoke from the cigaret 
of Nancy Stoughton, who, because she was the wife of 
the British Counselor of Embassy, sat at his right. He 
remembered that he had promised to say good night to 


8 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

his daughter, but she would not notice. It was nothing! 
He sat back comfortably, contented, expectant. 

He knew his power. No doubt part of it was due to 
his place in the world—rich, distinguished in two fields. 
Men skilled in money-making often are conferred hono¬ 
rary degrees for their bequests to universities, but few of 
them because they have taken place among learned men 
and true scholars. A devotion of a life-time made some 
men true scholars and learned, but not many could write 
checks for millions without a twinge. If he really wanted 
Muriel, few competitors in power stood in his way; but 
there were other reasons too. He had charm. He had 
always had it, and this he knew, not by conceit but by 
experience. 

Often women for whom he cared nothing showed in 
the fixity of their half-troubled, half-entranced, and steady 
gaze into his dark eyes that they faced something either 
to fear or to pray they might have for their own. They 
looked at him a little eagerly and hopefully, as Muriel 
looked at him. It was something perhaps of the same 
touch of the spirit which he felt when Muriel projected 
herself toward him with her own eyes and her own lan¬ 
guorous voice and the almost imperceptible inclination of 
her body. He had magnetism, it was often said. 

He was confident that she would come to stroll with 
him, but he did not quite understand why, having prom¬ 
ised to do so and having seen the beckoning moon-shadows 
on the paths between the trees, she lingered to hear a 
dull story told by old Mrs. Mortimer before the others 
had settled around their mad card-tables again. Perhaps 
she too felt that there was to be a reckoning on this night. 

Once she had joined him, however, she went forth by 
his side with a brisk step and teetering in faint symbol- 


Fresh Waters 9 

ism of the dance. At the Casino across the bay the band 
was playing, and the stimulus of the music came drifting 
romantically across the black waters as if the notes them¬ 
selves came dancing down the silver path of the moon. 
He walked on, his jaw set firmly as if this were a grim 
business, but he leaned toward her once so that the 
touch of her hair would brush his cheek and he could 
breathe in her fragrance. 

“It’s nice to be alone with you,” she said, emphasizing 
the niceness and him, with the skilful touches of charm 
characteristic of her. 

“Why?” 

“Because it is so comfortable. You give me the sense, 
Alfred—of—of permanence.” 

“Give you?” He meant that with any other than 
Muriel the matter was of no consequence. 

Understanding him fully, she said, “Yes.” 

Bascom threw his cigaret away; it was a distraction, 
after all. Immediately she threw her own into the grass, 
where it burned red for a moment among the chaste 
lights of the fireflies skimming above the little stretch of 
lawn. 

“Permanence?” he asked reflectively. “What do you 
want of permanence?” 

She turned to stare at him in utter surprise; the moon 
was full upon her face. He could see every flutter of 
expression. More than ever the thing which shone from 
her countenance now was the essence of beautiful bar¬ 
barism. He laughed as he considered that this young 
American had in her face the nymph of the deep forest, 
the Mona Lisa, the cruelty of a Theodosia, the playful 
tenderness he had once seen on the face of a low-caste 


io Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

girl squatting on a door-step in the sun of India, and yet 
something more rare and fine and worth preserving than 
all of these. 

It was quite characteristic of her not to answer for 
many moments while they walked on. Then she said as 
they entered into the cloistered pine-grove: 

“Don’t you know that I hunger for permanence? Can’t 
you believe that I am like a vessel having sailed through 
sunshine and tempest, I now turn toward a harbor ?” 

He stopped as oite who sees a great hole suddenly open 
before the footsteps and stood thinking. He had not 
contemplated having pity for her. There had been con¬ 
viction in her voice and a guaranty of sincere, deep mean¬ 
ing in the sudden tired droop of her head. 

“Well?” he said. 

This was an invitation to confession. She wa9 making 
surrender, and he knew it. 

“There is no real romance,” she said bitterly. “I have 
sought for it. Sometimes I have sought for it desper¬ 
ately and wildly. But the fires are always of straw— 
quick ashes. Perhaps I have cheated myself by impa¬ 
tience, by haste, by seizing that which I could quickly 
and easily take in my fingers. I have been made love to 
enough. You know it, of course.” 

“That is nothing to me,” he said, weaving his own 
interest with hers; “I am only concerned with your 
happiness.” 

He knew that was untrue ; he was concerned with his 
own too. He felt with vague discomfort that he had 
come to the last landmark of his life. He must have 
her. She would lengthen his tether—she would set some¬ 
thing within him free again. 

“I believe that is true, Alfred,” she replied. “You 
have tenderness, you are kind. I used to laugh at kind- 


Fresh Waters n 

ness. A little cruelty thrilled me once, rather more than 
kindness, but now the values have changed.” 

“And you seek a harbor ?” 

“The right harbor—yes.” 

“Can this be you ?” he asked incredulously. “You, who 
are alive with eternal vitality, with fire, with sparks 
struck from fine metal? You, who danced that Russian 
thing this afternoon on the lawn like a whirlwind? You, 
who swam with me, shouting pure joy into the sunset?” 

“I am young,” she said. “I have all that. It could be 
used by some one, I think. I would not be dull or inert. 
But there is the call for a mooring, just the same. You 
can not understand.” 

He knew that she, in her subtle way, was opening her¬ 
self. “A home ?” he said. “That’s what the girls on the 
park benches say, I believe—a home.” 

“Oh, I have a deep regard for the dignity of those 
park-bench girls. I understand now how right and 
simple and direct they are. They want a protection, a 
provision, a home. Why not? Well, I understand them, 
Alfred. Yes, I do—now. I used to say I never would 
marry. Why should I? I have had such a good time. 
So much sense of power. I could keep on for many 
years, but that’s it—a home.” 

“And children,” he laughed. 

She shook her head and said to him quite seriously, 
“I hope no one will ask that of me. There is no instinct 
of that kind in me.” 

“On the contrary—fear?” he questioned. 

“Yes, perhaps—to be honest, but it makes an old 
woman so quickly. Can you imagine me an old woman ?” 

“No. No. No.” 

“Besides, I will not marry a young man. They bore 
me till I can’t bear it. They all bore me. They are so 


12 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

stupid. I’ve outgrown young men. And older men make 
such doddering fathers for children, don’t they? I mean 
by the time the children have grown up. All the way 
along there is a chasm. Fathers should be young fathers. 
Give me another light.” 

The zone of radiance from the match appeared to 
have her lips for its center. They were colorful, flexible 
lips, moist, warm, alluring. They represented the urge 
of youth; they suggested the spellbound and blind and 
eternal hunger of youth. 

“Got it?” he asked. 

She replied by parting the lips and the smoke curled 
out into the moonlight. 

“Good!” he said. 

“Come on,” she invited him. “Let’s not fence, Al¬ 
fred. After all, we better not. You are too seasoned and 
I am too naturally wise and worldly. I could fascinate 
you as a woman can fascinate any man—I could talk 
about you. But somehow with you it’s no longer a 
game. None of my tricks. Let’s talk about us.” 

“Then, here,” he said, pointing. “A few steps 
yonder.” 

The moonlight fell in barred radiance, whose carpet 
was interrupted by the shadow of the straight trunks 
of the pines. It covered the fragrant needles and fell 
upon a marble seat—a place where ghost 9 might 
come to sit and listen to the night-long swishing song of 
the wind in the evergreen tree-tops. She sat there and 
held her knee in the clasp of her hands—a carved god¬ 
dess with a cigaret drooping from her lips in an air of 
abandon. 

“You would not love me?” he said, not doubting his 
power. 


Fresh Waters 13 

“Haw do I know before I tried ?” she said. “There 
need be no dishonesty between us. How do I know until 
you-” 

She stopped, and Bascom felt something grow cold 
within. Had he lost already that magic of his, that mys¬ 
tery, that life-long reserve of power which had made 
women he cared nothing for ready for his call ? 

But she went on: “How do I know until I have tried? 
How will I know until you have made a little love—the 
kind that burns for us now—grow into a volcanic chaos ?” 

“You have that volcanic chaos somewhere up your 
sleeve,” he said lightly, but in the shadow standing above 
her he scowled. She had set him a task. She suggested 
effort, striving, artfulness, and somehow that brought 
a sense of weariness, even with its alluring challenge. 
It was like another task of life. 

“To-night? Suppose the question came up to-night? 
Would you marry me?” 

She dropped her hands beside her on the marble bench 
with the sound of the rings on her listless fingers strik¬ 
ing against the stone. It was her answer. 

“You do not know?” 

“No, honest and cross my heart, I do not know.” 

He sat down beside her, twisting the fingers of his one 
hand in the grasp of the other. She was to have been 
his guide to the renewal of youth. She was to have been 
the link, the span, the bridge between something that 
was dying and would soon be gone and all that hunger 
for youth and hope and life and full love that had so 
long been his and unfulfilled. And now she did not 
know. 

It surprized him. He never had tasted any defeat. 
He had taken for granted that he had not changed. He 
had supposed that when he wished, as now, to reach out 



14 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

for all he had hoped sometime to enjoy and own and 
live, his fingers could close over it all. Well, perhaps 
they could. It would take effort. Half-dead things in 
him would have to be whipped into life again. His ways, 
his habits, his routine of life and thought must change. 

“Well,” Muriel was saying to him in her voice which 
always seemed sleek and tawny, like a panther’s coat. 
“Here we are alone. There is nothing here but the sound 
of the pines and the band at the Casino and the moonlight 
falling in weird patterns, and—us.” 

This was the moment he had often half pictured. This 
was none other than the most alluring of all women, so 
far as he knew now. He looked at her stupidly. 

She laughed softly and threw the painted shawl from 
her bare shoulders, lean but beautiful, their usual vital 
coloring now whitened to marble in that bath of silver 
light. Her head was thrown back, her lips slightly 
parted; she appeared to be inhaling with exquisite senses 
the fragrance of the night. 

Suddenly she tossed her dark head, uttered a cry from 
the back of her throat, half suppressed but almost feline 
in its note. Bascom saw her come slowly within a pace 
of him. He imagined that he felt the warmth of her 
breath. She had opened her arms widely—these beautiful 
and sinuous arms—as if welcoming him into their 
embrace. 

This was the moment which had always haunted him, 
this the moment in which was crystallized the symbol of 
all his hidden desires, all the unspoken wistful sense of 
fraternity with all the myriads of young loves through 
all the ages of abandon. This was renewal. This was 
the eternal urge. It was his; it was there within his 
reach. He was at the edge of the fountain of youth. 


Fresh Waters 15 

The waters had almost come up to touch lips, thirsty for 
a lifetime! 

But in that moment Bascom was aghast with hesita¬ 
tion. Something within his soul sent forth a thin current 
of poison for that moment; some chill ran into the 
warmth of his veins; some damnable restoration of regu¬ 
larity and sloth brought back to normal a heart which 
with old instincts had leaped and pounded with the mere 
nearness of her. 

He could take her in his arms. But what then? He 
could bury his nose and lips and chin in the curve of her 
neck. But would it not be awkward to face her, out of 
breath, the moment after? He could feel her yielding 
waist in the curve of his arm. But was it fair to her 
unless, after all, he was sure beyond all question that 
it would be best that they should have each other forever ? 
Something had turned the edge of the sharp blade of his 
desires; something weary ran through his nerves like the 
fumes of ether. Once nothing would have given him 
pause—he would have taken her fiercely, but now he 
cursed himself because he stopped to think of ethics. 

Youth! Where were the old fires? 

She had suddenly dropped her arms. They were 
pressed close to her sides, the muscles tense, almost corded 
with sinews, exaggerated by the shadows of the moon- 
light. 

“Well,” said she, breathing fast. “Have you still an¬ 
other cigaret in your case?” 

He did not wish to let that moment pass with her mere 
pretense that it had not existed. 

“I was thinking,” he said, in a voice which even in his 
own ears sounded like the deliberative enunciation of a 
corpulent old man, “I was thinking, Muriel, dear girl, 
that perhaps it would be unfair to you.” 


16 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

He had a sense of defeat as one who suddenly realizes 
that an attempt has been made to do an impossible thing. 
It was in his voice, his face, the droop of his strong 
body. 

“Well?” she said inquiringly, and pressed her lips 
together. 

“I was thinking that all you said about seeking a 
harbor was rather immature,” he went on, trying to 
summon his skilled mastery of persons. “I hesitated 
because somehow it seemed to me that you should con¬ 
sider that in ten years I will be an old man while you 
will still have ripe young love. I wondered what I would 
say to you then. I wondered how I could do the cour¬ 
ageous thing and give you up then. I was thinking of 
you.” 

If, in her reply, she had hurled anger at him, it would 
have been different and, for him, better. Instead she 
suddenly took his hand in a friendly way as one who 
understands, and led him toward the marble seat. Stand¬ 
ing before him .there, she put her palms upon his 
shoulders. 

Would he reach out and draw her to him? Perhaps 
not. Better to hear what she would say. She appeared 
now so far away from him in spirit. 

“Listen to me, Alfred, old fellow.” She was going on 
in the tones which young Stimpson calls “Muriel’s coun¬ 
try club voice.” “Listen to me. There’s no use putting 
it on consideration for me. You know as well as I do 
what the matter is.” 

“And what?” he asked fearfully as if premonition was 
upon him. 

“Why you are such a liar,” she said. “You’d never 
have given a thought to my future if to-night had been 
ten years ago.” 


Fresh Waters 17 

He groaned almost inaudibly as one who hears a sen- 
tence of a court. 

“Why, you must realize, Alfred Bascom, that youth— 
your youth—has gone!” 

He stared up at her painfully. 

“We can’t discuss that, can we?” she inquired. “It’s 
rather awkward and I’m not heartless—I’m going to 
stroll off, back to the bridge-tables, alone.” 

“Oh, all right,” he managed to say. “Here’s your 
cigaret. My last.” 

“Keep it.” 

“No.” 

She leaned down and kissed him lightly on the cheek. 

“Suppose, as they say, I can’t live without you,” he 
asked. 

She laughed. She said almost tenderly, “Oh, then, 
come for me again. Perhaps I’m wrong.” 

“Perhaps.” 

“Good night.” 

He watched her go, a wraith of white now among the 
darkened trees. The band across the wide sweep of 
water played a faint two-step which came to these woods, 
rising and falling as if registering the undulations of 
the gentle night wind. Over there they were dancing— 
young girls, pliant of waist, flushed with the joy of move¬ 
ment or a whispered word. Soft arms, the thrill of 
touch of hands, perhaps a kiss for good night; the present 
warm, vital reality with the dreams of the future, breath¬ 
less expectancy, hope, promise—youth. And his had 
gone! 

He buried his bowed head in the cup of his upturned 
palms. 

“It can’t be true,” he said in a guttural voice. “Youth! 
Youth!” 


18 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

He was not used to defeat. After they had gone he 
remembered vaguely, as one who has been in drunken 
uncertainty that he had said good night to his guests with 
rather more brilliance of conversation than was usually 
attributed to him. 

A dreadful sense of loneliness came over him. He was 
defeated. He was out of the game for good. Life had 
come and gone before he knew. It had slipped away; 
it had run out between his fingers while he had failed 
to clutch it. 

In a panic of disordered personality he paced the 
bricked terrace, listening to the pulsing chorus of the 
insects. The band at the Casino had ceased; the lights 
went out. It must be two. No, after two. This was 
Saturday. Saturday and April. The days and weeks 
and months to come began to afflict his mind as a prison 
sentence. There would be days without thrill, without 
zest; worse yet, without emotion. Something in him 
would die a lingering death, a slow, horrible wasting 
death. The waters of life would dry up. He could see 
himself doddering in a corner of the club in town, like 
those old bachelors who were always watery of eyes, as 
if undignified woe had left the externals of grief long 
after the eating worm had ceased to find any heart to 
consume in infinite mouthfuls. 

Of course, he could go back for Muriel. He could 
swing it if he wished. He could bargain with her. Per¬ 
haps another time the leap of youth would be in his 
veins and sinews and in his brain and soul. Or, at any 
rate, he could buy her. She would marry him. If not 
Muriel, then some other. 

It became grotesque; he thought if all rejected him, 
perhaps some maid from the employment bureaus, some 


Fresh Waters 19 

pink-cheeked, fresh peasant— As a last resort—to act 
out his lost youth. 

And then his courage broke, and he was left with his 
own dead, distless life. He went into the hall and stood 
looking into the long mirror, while all the house was a9 
still and empty as he himself. This image in the glass!— 
it was that of an old man. It was saying to him, “She 
wouldn’t give you any youth. No youth at all!” and his 
own lips in moving appeared to him gray and cold like 
those of a thing out of a mortuary which had come to 
life for a breath of protest against the wasted years and 
against the empty end. 

In the library the clock was striking four. Who 
would believe that Bascom would sit up half the night 
like this, like a thing in a cage of its own new convic¬ 
tions, talking to itself in the voice of a man unbalanced ? 
Who would believe that he would stand here, in this dim 
light from the one tiny lamp in the ceiling, while ghostly 
feet creaked softly on the stair-treads and the gray of 
predawn crept through the long windows, trembling, de¬ 
feated, weary, facing the monotony of weary loneliness? 
He put his arm out suddenly to seize the newelpost of the 
stairs, but his feet dragged up with painful slowness. 
Well, youth had gone. 

In his own room, he stood looking about in the cold, 
dim haze of morning at all the familiar possessions like 
a man who has come to bid them farewell. But there 
was to be no farewell to these things, for these were 
things he would live with to the end. 

“And so to bed,” he quoted wearily. 

But as he pulled the collar of his evening coat down 
one shoulder he stopped suddenly. He had heard a voice, 
a faint, vague voice. He looked up half frightened at 


20 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

that cool and smiling portrait of his wife. It had spoken 1 
He thought for a moment of a miracle—that the portrait 
had spoken to him! 

As he stood looking at it, half frightened, he heard 
the mumbling voice again, light, pleasant of tone—his 
daughter! Yes, his daughter, there in the next room. 
The servants had left the door ajar or perhaps the wind 
of that night had blown it open. She was dreaming. 
She was mumbling in troubled sleep. 

He pulled his coat on again, and, going to the door, 
he crept in on tiptoe. Surely his daughter was not ill! 

He knew as he bent over her French painted bed that 
she was not ill. Her head was resting on her slender 
bent arm; the light, flaxy hair was spread out over the 
white pillow; her lips were slightly parted in a smile, 
and her closed eyelids were quite marvelous in their un¬ 
worn beauty, with the long lashes spread upon her satin 
cheeks. This was a moment of awe for Bascom. He 
was awed by her beauty. He was awed, it seemed, by 
her very presence and existence. 

He walked quietly across the rug toward the long win¬ 
dow which led to the stone balcony outside her room, and 
there he stood looking at the sea. It was lightening fast 
now; there was in the light of its sky a trace of amber 
of the morning, and little dark clouds hung over the 
horizon. He could hear the swish of waves brought in 
by the dawn’s breeze breaking monotonously on the 
beach below the rocks, and in his nostrils was the fresh 
aroma of the open waters. 

“Oh, is that you?” 

It was his daughter’s voice, filled with surprise, but 
also there came to his ears her pleasure, her delight at 
waking to find him standing there, and for a moment 
he felt shaken by the thrill of it. 


Fresh Waters 21 

“What are you doing ?” 

He did not answer. 

“You haven’t been in bed?” 

“No, dear one, I was looking at the sea.” 

“I want to look at the sea, too—with you.” 

With a rush of impulse he crossed the room and, 
putting his strong arms beneath her slender warm body, 
he swung her up and held her close to him. She might 
have been surprized by the fierceness of his embrace, as 
he was. He knew now that no love of woman could 
ever inspire the hunger of heart expressed as his was 
now expressed in the tensity of his muscles, in the eager¬ 
ness of his own face as he held his daughter in his arms. 
She might have been surprized, but she only yielded and 
gave a little cry of gladness. 

He took her to the balcony and put her on the flat top 
of its thick stone wall, where the wind blew the edges 
of her filmy nightdress about her slender ankles, and 
with one arm about her he felt the coolness of her wrist 
as it thrust its delicious roundness into the curve of his 
hand. 

“Why don’t you come like this every morning?” she 
asked. “It’s fun.” 

“With me?” he inquired in a breaking voice. 

“Yes, with you. Of course.” 

She was looking out over the morning sea as he had 
looked. She said, “I’d like to go over there.” 

“Where?” 

“Oh, over there. I’d like to take a little boat and go 
away with you. Not a big boat. And not anybody 
else.” 

And then she said something familiar to his ears. 
“I’d like to see what is beyond the edge of the world over 
there. I’d like to go with you forever.” 


22 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Would you?” he said. “Oh, would you? I’d be so 
much obliged, my dear one. Look here.” 

He took her down and rang the servants’ bell. Some 
one was always supposed to be on watch, and it was 
Jerry who came, collarless, trying to hide unpreparedness 
by holding his coat-collar around his neck, rubbing sleep 
from his eyes. 

“Did you ring, sir?” 

“Yes, to-morrow—to-day, I mean—as soon as you 
can find Olson, tell him to get the catboat ready. Not 
the yacht, you know—the catboat—the little one with 
two bunks. My daughter and I are going to find some¬ 
thing.” 

“I beg pardon—where did you say, sir?” 

“Oh, over there—we don’t know—over the edge of the 
horizon!” 

“It will be fun,” his daughter said, as the door closed. 

“It will if you go back and get some sleep,” replied Bas- 
com. “Lots of folks have said I am a pretty good sort.” 

She smiled. “I say so too.” 

“Good night, again.” 

“Good night.” 

As he bent over to kiss her lightly, he saw in her eyes 
all the hope, all the expectancy of the future burning 
bright in an inexhaustible present of youth and love. 
As he bent over her, he saw the years running ahead 
with his life carried by hers, with his mind opening into 
the expanse of hers, with his heart tuned to her heart. 

He closed the door quietly and leaned back, gazing up 
at the portrait on the opposite wall of his room. 

“My girl,” he said to it, “I’ve been a fool. I didn’t know 
what you were trying to tell me always. You gave me our 
daughter, and it is in her that I will find my new youth.” 


THE LURE 


“What a satanic face!” George Chataway, the nice 
young Englishman from some nice old gardened estate 
out of harm’s way in Devonshire, made the comment 
after a long, almost rude, stare at a thin, tall, dark, evil- 
countenanced man who sat at the next table in Durin’s 
dipping the unlighted end of his cigar into the hot black 
coffee before each sybarite puff. 

Rathbun, who sat with us and who has made a world 
of money in hotel real estate, and who being—for rea¬ 
sons best known to himself—a bachelor, shot a glance 
at Chataway. 

No doubt he was thinking that the boy, raised in some 
repressive, straight-and-narrow atmosphere, probably 
was wondering whether his nice people at home and he 
himself were always on good behavior because of virtue 
or because of fear. 

George had come out to see America, and had never 
been able to get farther west than the sunset side of 
Broadway. Two weeks had given him an almost wistful 
expression, especially when he sat among the changing 
throng in a place like During. His eyes were full of the 
flash of success and pretense, of white arms and twinkling 
feet, and it would have been absurd and hypocritical to 
deny that he would have liked to know just what would 
happen if one were a part of it all. 

‘‘As a matter of fact,” said Rathbun, “the man with 
the satanic face is Brisco Bourne. He has been on Broad¬ 
way for twenty years as a designer of costumes for mu- 
23 


24 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

sical shows and revues. The meditation that you now 
see on his face, and call hellish, I know very well. It 
never comes except when he dines alone in a wild place 
like this and recalls the memory of his wife. His one 
idea for nearly two decades has been to save enough 
money to go back to a place I think they call Trellis, 
Kansas, and build a maternity hospital to her memory.” 

We were silent. After a bit Rathbun laughed. 

“Of course, it is always difficult to know just what is 
in the human heart. Much more decent and tender things 
usually than we guess or anybody wants to show. The 
matches, please. Oh, yes, that applies to these people 
here too. They may look like satyrs, but they’re not.” 

He turned with a quick twist of his heavy body to 
Paxton, the playwright. He said: “There was Vera 
Savarin 1” 

Vera Savarin! Of course! 

Well, it was Richard Brayley who put an end to her 
career, and that story rather goes to prove something. 

He came from Spurley, Ohio, which would be mean¬ 
ingless if one had not seen a set of souvenir post cards 
from that place showing The Falls and the Phoenix Bank 
Building and McKinley Park. These cards were enough 
to introduce Spurley—a place where there are junction 
railroad yards and long, far-away whoops of locomo¬ 
tives at night suggesting sadness, and a few blocks of 
stores with lawyers’ offices and lodge rooms above, and 
a Carnegie library across from the Methodist Church, 
and three factories and an industrial housing district 
down near the river, and residences with white-picket 
and bent-ironwork fences on the hill. Anyone could tell 
that Spurley was a terrible American town, outwardly 
of small and mean spirit and deadly dullness in the rounds 
of life, but with some latent nobility that would leap up 


The Lure 25 

into fire when war came, and otherwise could only be 
seen by watching the undercurrent of quiet idealism that 
kept life straight on some sort of an awkward climb 
upward. 

The first time we ever saw big Dick Brayley was the 
night Trafford Kelly, the song writer, took us into the 
grill to meet him. 

“I’ve caught a rare one,” he said. “A big, fine-looking 
game bird from a tank town in Ohio. He made a killing 
in business, and would have blossomed out long ago, but 
his mother lingered on for a while. Now she sleeps on 
the hill, and the volcano in this guy’s soul has been 
brought by him to Broadway to blow its little head off and 
cover everything with lava and gold dust.” 

We took a look at the new specimen. He was a broad- 
shouldered, big-handed man, not much more than thirty- 
four or five, with a touch of gray in the hair above his 
ears, a broad forehead, space between the eyes, and a 
pretty good, straight, honest look. Anyone would have 
guessed that his was not a very complex soul. No doubt 
his simplicity had been the basis of his success. He had 
inherited the Spurley Washing Machine and Brooder 
Company. During the war it earned a creditable and 
exceptional record turning out parts for aircraft frames— 
and no end of a sudden fortune. “You don’t mean that 
this is your first visit to New York?” asked Kelly as 
Brayley, with a bit of nervous flourish, ordered for all 
of us. 

“Yes, sir,” the newcomer said, talking in his abrupt, 
short sentences. “I’m going to make it my home. New 
York is the center of things. No denying that. I’ve 
never been able to get here before. I never could leave 
Spurley on account of mother. You know how that is?” 

That began the picture that was gradually filled in 


26 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

with all its colors and shapes and oddities, as bit by bit 
we learned to know Dick Brayley and what he had been 
outside and inside all those years. Long before he ever 
took hold of Vera Savarin, who was known better on the 
billboard as The Golden Lure, we knew that those who 
looked upon him as he appeared externally and called 
him “The Man who would be a Prince” had not figured 
on the depth of still waters. 

No doubt it is absurd to use the expression “still 
waters” in connection with his name. He tried to make 
them run swift enough, but who could know why with¬ 
out knowing about the thing that he always shuddered 
over when he used to say: “No wonder a man loves 
life—if you know what I mean—when one has known 
thirty-odd years of death in Spurley.” 

This fellow Brayley had been born there. All his 
family had ever known was the quiet round of life or the 
grim push of life. His grandfather had farmed rocky 
land in Maine, driven to the post office and general store, 
read the Bible, paid off the mortgage and died with sons 
and daughters scattered all over the pioneer West. He 
left some good mahogany furniture and dried flowers 
incased in glass ovals, and a stuffed redbird. 

His father had gone to Spurley in the old days with 
a bride from Herkimer County, New York, and set up 
a wood-turning mill almost on the spot on the river bank 
where the Spurley Washing Machine and Brooder Com¬ 
pany’s works spread out now. The sum-total result at 
the time of his death was a big square white house on 
the street that leads to the cemetery that never sees 
much go by except when the Grand Army, escort and 
band, puff up the climb of Washington Avenue on Me¬ 
morial Day. He also had a wife with some incurable 
kidney disease that had made her almost blind and cer- 


The Lure 27 

tainly cantankerous. Those who did not know her 
used to exclaim: “What a dear little old lady!” He also 
left his only child—the boy who was then sixteen, just 
getting rid of a change of voice and taking on long 
trousers. 

Dick was thinking even then of leaving Spurley. In 
those simple days of fishing, high school, football, straw¬ 
berry festivals at the church and smoking in the grave¬ 
yard, he said he leaned toward the life of an actor, be¬ 
cause an actor is guaranteed that he will know how life 
feels and what it means in order to show other people 
what great emotions are. 

Just how Mrs. Brayley, with only the assistance of 
Eben Bush, the president of the Phoenix Bank, who al¬ 
ways knew all about how anything could not be done, 
managed to carry the business on until “The Man who 
would be a Prince” was twenty-one will always remain a 
mystery. She did it all from a rocking-chair in the 
second-story front window of the blue bedroom, and then 
when young Brayley, putting from him, one after an¬ 
other, dreams of being an actor, a man of the world and 
a diplomat in an ambassador’s post in Russia, where life 
is led intensely and vividly, became of age the mother’s 
personality fell on him like a ton of smothering damp 
soot shutting out the light and air. 

Dick’s father had taken him once to Chicago. Now 
when the business, as the family had always called the 
Spurley Washing Machine and Brooder Company, gave 
a reason to send the new young owner to the great, ex¬ 
citing metropolis he looked forward to it eagerly. But 
mother had a spell. 

“Dick!” she gasped. “You can never know how I’ve 
learned to depend on you! If you ever left me alone in 
this house overnight it would be my death!” 


28 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“1 could get Mrs. Yates to come—or even Doctor 
Nagel to sleep in the east room.” 

“You are an unnatural son to think of such a thing! 
Oh, the years I worked my fingers to the bone for you! 
The devotion I gave!” 

“Well, mother, I guess maybe you’re right,” the young 
giant had said; and that phrase, “Mother, I guess maybe 
you’re right,” became, as the years went by, a kind of 
harp string plucked over and over again until it made 
a monotonous hum of devotion and of submerged 
personality. 

Just once there came a crisis. In his heart of hearts 
Brayley fought out then a terrible battle to renounce 
forever the idea that he would ever live a great life. 
“Great Life” was the phrase he used with all the empha¬ 
sis of capitals and italics, to express the green rooms of 
theaters, the boudoirs of dancers, the courts of Europe, 
the white lights of New York, travel, adventure, great 
banquets, conspiracies, intrigues, the pomp of Rome— 
or Broadway. He was twenty-five and Myra Carmichael 
was warm of color, plump of figure and certainly good of 
intention. He came to the parting of the ways. Life 
in Spurley with her, and pies, and vegetable hash on 
Monday nights—that was love. The world—far away 
in time or distance—of midnight, evening clothes, low- 
necked gowns, music—that was glamour. He deter¬ 
mined to give up glamour for love. 

But when, sitting in the evening, as he always sat be¬ 
tween five-thirty and supper time, in that great, empty, 
square house, with its steel engravings and glowering old 
furniture, with his great brown hand over his mother’s, 
he said to her: “Mother, I want to talk to you about 
Myra Carmichael,” the old vixen with her saintlike face 
gave a scream. 


The Lure 29 

‘It’s come! It’s come!” she shrieked in a fine, thin, 
piping voice. “The thing I most dreaded in all the 
world!” 

“Why, mother!” 

“You’d leave me for some minx of a girl, eh? You’d 
go away and leave me here helpless with my memories! 
Or you’d bring some outsider into our home! And you 
not yet twenty-six, and never spent a night away from 
me! Is this the reward I get from my own flesh and 
blood?” 

“She’s a nice girl,” he said simply. “I thought maybe 
she’d steady me.” 

“Steady you! What steadying do you need ? Haven’t 
you come from steady people? Haven’t you a steady 
life? You get up just like your father did at six-thirty, 
and work all day and have supper and go down to get 
the Chicago paper at the drug store and read aloud to 
me and go to bed. God bless my boy! He’s always so 
good!” 

There was a long silence. The locomotive whistles 
down in the valley sounded so far away and yearning 
and lonesome and threatening of sadness and separa¬ 
tions ! 

“I shan’t live long,” said his mother, with the tears 
of self-pity streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t marry, 
Dick!” 

“Well, mother, I guess maybe you’re right,” he said. 
“And now it’s time for supper again.” 

He was thinking of the old set of china that came 
out twice a day, and twice a day was put back in the 
cupboard by the hired girl after he had eaten his meal 
alone at the oval table. It was white, with a gold stripe 
round the edge and one rose in the middle of every¬ 
thing. 


30 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

That was the life he led. The people in Spurley 
thought it was a beautiful life. Hardly a mother in 
Spurley failed at one time or another to hold up Bray- 
ley as the kind of son who shows proper gratitude to¬ 
ward the one who had brought him into the world. None 
of them knew the truth about him. 

The truth about him never appeared until, having pat¬ 
ted his mother’s hand until she had gone to sleep, he 
tiptoed to his room and locked the door and lit the orna¬ 
mental glass lamp, or—when the electric service of Spur¬ 
ley was started—turned on the light, and with night 
moths bobbing against the screens in the summer and 
snow pattering on the panes in winter, he read Balzac 
and the Russian novelists and smart magazines and 
those that told of society or those that told of the border¬ 
land of society, or the plots of plays or printed pictures, 
of lovely stars of the screen and stage. He knew what 
was the correct dress for men and who was at Palm 
Beach and what was behind this and that divorce and 
where the best chefs in the country were located. That 
it was vice or sensuality or mere pleasure that attracted 
him was not an accusation that anyone could make 
justly. The glamour was not that. It was being a man 
of the world, having the savoir-faire, living among the 
best of viands, the rarest of wines, the most beautiful of 
women and the most brilliant of wit; it was to him en¬ 
tertaining in all magnificence, with great gestures of hos¬ 
pitality; it was living surrounded by the great dramas 
of love; it was being, indeed, a man of whom chorus 
girl and banker would say some day “Ah, there was a 
prince!” That was the glamour! That was life! 

Recalling the glamour of life—of the great lure—he 
would think to himself, “Perhaps, even now, when the 
opera is over, there is a supper party where there are 


The Lure 31 

ballet dancers and Russian noblemen and reporters on 
the great New York dailies and authors and artists and 
actors and women with their eyes filled with the sadness 
of experience and the flash of jewelry and music and 
gleaming goblets!” 

And then he would go to bed with a sigh, remember¬ 
ing that this was Spurley and that he hated Spurley; 
that to-morrow by eight he would be down at the busi¬ 
ness, and that he hated the business; that at five-thirty 
he would come back because his heart would make him 
come back to pat his mother’s hand. Some day perhaps 
he could wipe his own hands of it all! Some day he 
could take up his art—the art of being a man of the 
world. 

That day came. It came at the end of a long four 
years during the European turmoil, when money rolled, 
slid and flowed into the surplus and was put into the 
increase in plant of the Spurley Washing Machine and 
Brooder Company. Brayley wondered how he would 
ever spend so much money. Youth was still his; he still 
had the skin, the eyes, the straight figure of youth when 
he asked the mayor of Spurley what the municipality 
would like as a gift. Only old men or last wills and 
testaments had ever been benefactors of Spurley. The 
mayor finally decided on a watering trough and drinking 
fountain and a shaft of granite to commemorate the 
minister’s son and the town drunkard, both of whom lost 
their lives in the war. Before it was done one hot August 
day Dick’s mother began to breathe faster and faster 
and sink deeper and deeper into an unconsciousness 
that in its final profundity marked her end. 

Well, he had done his duty by his mother. He had 
even thought he loved her. He had said over and over 
again as she hung her dead weight upon the neck of his 


32 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

personality and exercised her dominance: “There, there, 
mother! I guess you’re right.” But it was over now. 
He felt a great relief. Conscience-stricken because 
through his film of grief that he knew he ought to feel, 
there always bubbled up the joy of being free, just as 
if school were over or a reprieve and a pardon had been 
sent by the governor to the square, white Brayley man¬ 
sion, which to Dick had appeared at times as a great 
white tomb with the green tops of the giant maple trees 
drooping over it. 

Six months after his mother had left that house for 
the last time Brayley went to Higginson, the lawyer— 
the man with the prominent ears—who is the best story 
teller in Spurley. 

“Well, Jim,” said Dick with a sigh, “I guess you’d 
better put the old house on the market.” 

“Sell your father’s house! Where are you going to 
live?” 

“New York and Paris.” 

“New York and Paris! You ain’t crazy?” 

“No, I ain’t!” said Brayley. “But I’m going to leave 
Spurley, Jim. I’ve got the business all in order. I’m 
rich now, and alone. I’m going to see life—a lot of life. 
And I’m going to live, I tell you!” 

That was why he was in New York. That was why 
he lived at the Ambervelt in a suite of rooms done in 
peach and gold. That was why he gave the parties— 
those Lucullan feasts which might have rivaled the de¬ 
bauches of a Roman emperor, save for one presence 
that never could be banished from them—the presence 
of Richard Brayley himself. Somehow “The Man who 
would be a Prince,” standing with a glass in his hand 
to deliver toasts to all the mixed riffraff of celebrity that 
came to his board, to the actresses, the moving-picture 


The Lure 33 

producers, the critics, the Broadway parasites, the pro¬ 
moters, the gamblers, the cuddling ladies from the bor¬ 
derland of society, the spurious or reduced English and 
Russian nobility, always spread out through and over all 
some strange awe, some suggestion of vast, unending so¬ 
briety and integrity and gentleness and humility. 

“Do you think I am making an impression upon our 
New York?” Brayley once asked, looking solemnly out 
of his clear blue eyes. “You know I’m willing to spend 
a good deal—not for show, but just to know people and 
do whatever is necessary to be well dressed and have 
savoir-faire and give people a good time.” 

Rathbun threw his hands in the air. 

“Let’s put it this way, Dick, old man,” he said. “Let’s 
say that Broadway seldom sees anyone like you.” 

“I enjoy the night life,” Brayley said, rubbing his great 
hands. 

“I suppose you just want to be a man about town.” 
Rathbun bantered. 

“Yes,” said our rare bird innocently, “I want to.” 

“Well, I’ll say this,” said the real-estate operator, 
laughing: “You can drink as much as any man I ever 
saw.” 

“I don’t like it much,” said Brayley. “It doesn’t affect 
me as I thought it was going to.” 

“The worst of it is that it never affects anyone else 
when you are round,” Rathbun asserted with feeling. 
After a moment of reflection he added some advice. He 
said, “You entertain very good-looking ladies, Brayley, 
but you don’t love any of them. I think it would be 
a good thing for you to love somebody—not all—one!” 

“I certainly like the women I know,” said the young 
manufacturer. “I’ve found them pretty refined too.” 

“Well, you listen to me,” went on Rathbun, tapping 


34 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

his cigar. “Even if you can’t love one, try it. You 
spend about a thousand dollars a week entertaining and 
going round to first nights and having tables engaged at 
two supper dances and a midnight frolic and running a 
big limousine here and there and on tailors’ bills. Well, 
a lot of people do that. I think the thing for you to do 
is to get a lady. Get a lady with a reputation. Take her. 
Be seen with her. Capture her—or appear to. Climb 
up on her fame.” 

“You’re not joking?” asked the other. 

“Joking?” said Rathbun. “No, I’m not joking. Have 
you ever been in love?” 

Brayley grinned. 

“Well, there’s Vera Savarin.” 

“Vera Savarin!” we all exclaimed. “The Golden 
Lure!” 

“Sure!” said Rathbun. “Do any of you know her 
personally?” 

“I’ve met her,” Brisco said. “I shall say that I wished 
I’d been a broker.” 

“Have you seen her act in Everlasting?” added King, 
the talking-machine magnate. “She’s a siren of sirens.” 

“The sirenest!” admitted Rathbun. “There’s your 
bird of paradise, Brayley! Be seen everywhere with 
Vera Savarin—breakfast, luncheon, the dansant, dinner, 
supper. I understand she is going back to the movies, 
and she isn’t playing at all now. It’s your chance. She 
will have the time for you now.” 

“But how to meet her?” asked Brayley. 

Rathbun swung his head round looking from table 
to table at Durin’s. He said, “Don Osgude, her man¬ 
ager, is usually here. There he is now!” 

The music whined and wailed and poised its notes at 
that moment, and then fell with crashes into a whirlpool 


The Lure 35 

of emotions and passions as if it were intelligent about 
the effect that Bray ley would have on the life of the 
Savarin girl. Rathbun had gone over to speak to the 
fat and sleek Osgude. 

He said to him after a moment, “Well?” 

“Oh, I think he’d amuse her all right,” replied the 
manager. “But, Rathbun, you know about her, eh? 
You’re one of the half dozen that know.” 

“What?” 

“Why, the secret.” 

“Oh—that?” 

“Well, it would cost a pretty penny if the truth got 
out,” Osgude said with feeling. “Our publicity man 
would go crazy! He’d faint in his tracks. We’ve spent 
thousands of dollars building against it.” 

Rathbun nodded. 

“I’ve fixed it,” he said when he returned. “Belloc 
Graeme, the moving-picture feller, is having a little 
Christmas party at his house in Oyster Bay. Vera Sav¬ 
arin will be there—and me—and you, Brayley. I can 
get it done.” 

Vera Savarin, if destiny had allowed her to go on, 
would have become more famous than any other vampire 
woman known to the stage or screen. She would have 
broken the hearts of those who ever saw her in a close-up. 
She was on the way to making a fortune. Her name 
would have become synonymous with the soul-wrecking 
profession. No one who had ever seen her ever forgot 
her. Nature had relieved her of effort. She was The 
Golden Lure by birth, contour and expression. Difficult 
as it is to analyze the features and personality that go 
to make up a rarity like Vera Savarin, anyone who ever 
met her face to face wondered how many men had 
killed themselves when she was through with them. 


36 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

Her figure was of a strange perfection made up of 
strength, symmetry and graceful line, full but seemingly 
slender, and capable of appearing at times tall, sinewy 
and snakelike, and at other times luxurious, complacent 
and almost plump. No pair of eyes, whether they be 
green, blue or brown, ever could open quite so wide in 
innocence or narrow quite so viciously in terrible, sophis¬ 
ticated, hypnotic concentration of a horrid, irresistible 
will power for evil. Round those eyes other features— 
her nose, with its delicate nostrils, the high, white fore¬ 
head, the flexible, delicate lips, the slightly incurving 
cheek—all were subservient attributes of perfection in a 
beauty that was not flat and insipid, but filled to the brim 
with the suggestion of all that a human being can express 
of heights—and depths. 

“It is indeed a great pleasure to meet you,” said Dick 
Brayley when he was introduced. 

Somehow those who saw them gained the impression 
that if either trembled or hesitated or showed any signs 
of fear it was not “The Man who would be a Prince.” 
The woman who was known as The Golden Lure because 
her hair, dark red in certain lights, could burst into 
blond brilliance at times as if a magic was at work—well, 
she was the one who looked into Dick’s eyes with sudden 
doubt and gave him a hand suddenly cold from nervous 
tension. Perhaps she knew then by some strange intui¬ 
tion that he would uncover that secret of which her man¬ 
ager had spoken so solemnly. 

Later in the evening of that first day someone asked 
where Vera Savarin and Dick had gone. 

“They’ve taken a sled away from the gardener’s boy,” 
said Graeme. “They’re coasting down the incline and 
across the tennis courts into the sunken garden. Remind 


The Lure 37 

me of a couple of kids. But let Vera do it. She can 
do it!” 

“Do you know her well? ,, asked Rathbun. 

“Not very—no,” the host admitted. “But who does? 
She picks her own victims, I guess.” 

Rathbun nodded enigmatically. 

A week later, when he stood among the flowering 
azalea plants at the entrance of Durin’s putting his hat 
check into the pocket of his white waistcoat, the cloak¬ 
room girl, recognizing him as one of the veteran in¬ 
siders of the white-light district, said to him, “This will 
put a big eyestrain on the guests, Mr. R.” 

“What’s that, Nancy?” 

“Vera Savarin is in to-night, sir. It isn’t often the 
boobs get a chance to see her. You ought to heard ’em 
buzz when she came in with a millionaire.” 

She was sitting in the corner of one of the seats 
that ran along the wall, but turning to talk with “The 
Man who would be a Prince” so that her back with 
its fine rippling muscles and its marble whiteness made 
everything else in that Babylonian cafe appear lack¬ 
ing in distinction. The gown she wore was like 
a reptile’s skin—the wet and glistening skin of a chame¬ 
leon. 

“Osgude, her manager, is some picker of costumers!” 
said Brisco. “She is certainly Stop, Look and Listen 
to-night. Look at that head of hair—that flash of red 
and gold above that tinkling green fabric!” 

“That’s nothing,” replied Rathbun. “As we pass their 
table look at the emerald she wears! Brayley paid three 
thousand for it, and she is just wearing it to-night to 
please him. She has refused it as a gift—positively 
refused it.” 


38 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Refused it! What are you talking about? How do 
you know?” asked Brisco. 

“How do I know a lot of the gossip of our little vil¬ 
lage?” Rathbun asked with a gesture of frank conceit. 

Of course it wa9 evident that Brayley was ensnared. 
He fairly basked in the warmth of her smiles and the 
attention they attracted as they sat at dinners at the 
Ambervelt or Durin’s or Colvefsan’s and under the 
staring eyes that followed them at the dansants when the 
young manufacturer, who had learned to dance as he 
had learned all the other smart accomplishments of the 
smart and so-called vicious world of manners and mo¬ 
dernity, moved among the unknowns with The Golden 
Lure fixing her great eyes upon his. She was creating a 
superb semblance of admiration that would feast upon 
the simplicity of this strange personality that was carried 
about in Brayley’s big clean-limbed body. 

Love ? Well, who could know about that ? Dick Bray¬ 
ley did not disclose the state of his heart to anyone. 

Some woman of no consequence who had been a 
guest at many of his spendthrift parties said to him with 
catlike whining, “It must be quite wonderful to spend 
your time with the wickedest woman in America.” 

“Oh, she isn’t wicked,” said the simple soul. “I guess 
she isn’t wicked.” 

“She i9 very beautiful.” 

“Well, I like to hear her voice,” he answered. “She 
has a wonderful voice to listen to.” 

Rathbun, however, began to be worried. He said, “I 
wonder what I’ve started? Not a tragedy, I hope.” 

We asked him what he meant—a playwright, a teacher 
of English at Harvard, and one or two others who knew 
Vera Savarin. 

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “It was aM right while he was 


The Lure 39 

spending money to be seen with her, and was showing her 
in the audiences of first-night performances and riding 
Central Park in a silk-lined motor. But Thursday night 
I saw them riding on a bus down Fifth Avenue, and they 
had dinner together on corned-beef hash in a cafeteria. 
What’s that mean to me ? Why, it’s a cinch that one or 
the other of them has ceased to care about being seen 
and is more interested in the other than in all the rest of 
the world. I’m asking myself whether it is he or she.” 

Osgude, her manager, showed alarm too. He said to 
Rathbun: “You better call off your Newfoundland dog.” 

“Call off your own icicle,” replied the old real-estate 
operator. “You control her, don’t you?” 

“No, I don’t, Rathbun,” whined the other. “You 
know how things are, darn it! I’ve got the biggest gold 
mine in America, but it’s full of dynamite, as you know. 
You know her weakness. If I ever could get on a per¬ 
sonal basis with her, why, it would be all right maybe. 
But look how I’m fixed!” 

Rathbun just laughed with a note of satanic derision. 
Perhaps he knew that the inevitable, as it concerned the 
two, was slowly ripening like a luscious fruit filled with 
the juices of promise or filled with a deadly poison. Per¬ 
haps he foresaw that the end was near, hanging, ready to 
drop. 

In point of fact, it could not have been many days 
after this when Brayley told Vera Savarin. He had 
been allowed twice to take her home to her apartment, 
and even to sit up in the living room of that strangely 
simple little retreat of The Golden Lure, talking to her 
till long after midnight, with the goldfish in the globe 
swimming about under the lamp in eternal restlessness, 
like the restlessness of the spirit of mankind, and the 
lights of the city winking white and blinking yellow 


40 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

beyond the roofs and roofs and roofs stretching to end¬ 
lessness downtown. Each light was an eye of knowing¬ 
ness. 

Just what they found to talk about remains perhaps 
a mystery—certainly their pasts had little of common 
ground. Perhaps they did not talk at all. Perhaps Bray- 
ley, when he could drag his eyes away from her, looked 
about at the simple furnishings of that nest and won¬ 
dered. Perhaps she looked with that vampire look into 
the simplicity of his eyes and wondered too. 

They were there again after midnight, and Brayley 
stared out the window, down the river, where the ice 
cakes floated like scraps of torn messages under the 
winter moonlight. At last he said the first word of it he 
had ever breathed—he said, “V, I love you.” 

“Oh!” said Miss Savarin as if someone had drawn 
a knife across her bare white arm. 

“I guess it kind of bores you to hear me say that. You 
must have heard it till you’re sick of hearing it.” 

“Not like that, Dick,” she said, staring at him. “No¬ 
body has ever said it—like that.” 

“Haven’t they?” 

“No, never! Always—different.” 

He scowled as if she had uncovered something. 

“I would offer you the kind of things you’d like if I 
could,” he said. “I’ve been carrying on a kind of a battle 
inside myself about you. I guess you will think I am a 
little green, after all. You’d probably think so even if 
I had not told you all about myself—about Spurley and 
mother and all. But now you’re sure to think so when 
I—when I—well, what I was going to speak to you about 
was—marriage.” 

He blurted it out as if he were some kind of a culprit. 


4i 


The Lure 

“You mean you want me to marry you?” 

He nodded, adding, “Somehow marriage is about all 
that would seem to satisfy me—that would seem kind of 
complete.” 

The Golden Lure rose and stood with her white and 
wonderful and notorious back turned toward him, and the 
fine muscles under the skin rippled as if with some 
emotion. 

“What's the matter?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” she said in a choking voice. “I want to 
marry you, Dick.” 

He put his arms round her and felt her grow limp as 
a runner who at the end of some grilling Marathon race 
yields to fatigue and exhaustion. They remained like 
that a long time, with Dick’s lips pressed against that 
wealth of glistening hair that was known to ten million 
pairs of American eyes. 

“I can’t believe it,” he said at last. “I thought maybe 
you wouldn’t want me to get—well, sentimental, instead 
of being a man of the world.” 

Miss Savarin put her arms round his neck. The ges¬ 
ture had none of the finish that she could use in display¬ 
ing her emotions upon the stage or before the camera. 

“When will you take me to Spurley?” she asked. 

“Spurley!” he exclaimed. “Spurley? Why, you poor 
dear girl, did you think marriage with me meant living 
in Spurley?” 

He could not speak he was so astonished! She loved 
him enough to go to Spurley! 

“Bless your heart, you don’t have to go to Spurley,” 
he said. “Why, I wouldn’t go back to Spurley for 
twenty million dollars!” 

He stopped there, because the sound of the door knob 


42 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

indicated that Mrs. Taussig, the old property woman of 
the Seager Theatre, who was now maid and guardian 
for The Golden Lure, was coming in. 

He looked up at the old woman, with her peering, 
curious face lined deeply with laughter and sorrow, the 
face that reminded one of a portrait of some old Dutch 
grandmother by Frans Hals. She had been an actress 
once, and she carried the atmosphere of ancient triumphs 
and glories and lost beauty, youth and power that the 
world had long ago forgotten. Then, with a suggestion 
of raising both palms in an expression of horror mingled 
with resignation, she shuffled out as she had come. 

“Spurley,” “The Man who would be a Prince” went 
on. “Why, I never dreamed of it! New York's the 
place for us. It's the garden of glamour—the place 
where you grew.” 

“I grew everywhere,” said Vera. “You know my 
family were with the red wagon—that we were circus 
people.” 

“No, Vera,” he went on, disregarding all else and sud¬ 
denly eloquent, his eyes glistening with triumph and with 
expectancy. “Together we shall know the life Eve 
always wanted. We shall live in luxurious comfort—not 
for ourselves, but for others. Everybody who sees us 
will know who we are. I used to think I'd kind of like 
vice, but I didn’t, I guess. All I wanted was the savoir- 
faire and dressing well and having the celebrities come 
to my dinners. I can afford it too. I’m richer than you 
think I am. I want to be known, Vera. I want to live 
at night. I want to be where there is light and life and 
gayety. I want to hear those orchestras talking and 
screaming and whispering about life, and we can do 
that. We can always be together, dining here and there 
and seeing all that goes on and knowing all the big Bo- 


The Lure 43 

hemian people—the creators of modern art and litera¬ 
ture—and dance together and—live! 

“Oh, I waited a long time for it!” he said. “I never 
told you that. I was ashamed to tell you everything. 
But I wanted, life. And now—well, now—with you to 
be with me year after year—I’ve found it!” 

“Spurley-” she began. 

“Spurley? Spurley nothing!” he said. “Not for me! 
Not for you! Not for us! What an idea! We’ll have 
an apartment with some magnificence, I tell you—in the 
center of things. We’ll rub elbows with the best and 
the worst. We’ll lead the big life—right here in New 
York.” 

His face was flushed; he was almost out of breath. 
He had seen Vera put her hands with their rings over 
her face, but he did not know why. He only stopped 
when he heard her sob. Down he dropped on his knees 
beside her. 

“What’s the matter, dear?” 

“Don’t ask me! Don’t ask me to tell you the truth!” 
she whispered. 

“No, no!” he replied. “That’s all right. I don’t ask 
you to. That’s nothing—whatever it is.” 

She put her hand in his hair and let her fingers, as 
acting on their own will, go rumpling round. 

“It’s gone now, dear,” she said at last, gazing down 
at him through tears. “See, I’m smiling. I’m the hap¬ 
piest woman in the world!” 

That night he could sleep but little. He was planning 
their life together. He had reached out for the top of 
that world which years of imagination had created for 
him, and his fingers had closed upon the topmost rung 
of his ladder! It never concerned Brayley that there 
were any disadvantages in being the husband of one who 



44 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

was known as The Golden Lure. She was beautiful, 
she was charming, she was lovely, she was kind and she 
was the soul, the essence, the living symbol of the 
glamour. 

Brayley was triumphant. 

He was still triumphant, with wide and gleaming eyes 
of expectancy, when he went to her apartment the next 
evening. He had not seen her all day. She had gone 
with Osgude, her manager, to some conference with a 
theatrical producer who happened to be in Philadelphia. 
She went to tell them that certain reasons had come up 
why she could make no contract for the rest of the sea¬ 
son. Mrs. Taussig had let him in and asked him if he 
would like some coffee. He had rubbed his cold hands 
as he had taken off his gloves and pulled at his cold nose 
as he said, “God bless you, Mrs. Taussig, yes!” 

And now the old actress and property woman had 
come with the smoking cup into the living room, and as 
a grandmother who feeds a yardful of chickens had 
stopped with her hands on her hips to watch Brayley 
drink it. 

After he had put down the cup he looked up with that 
boyish smile of his, and seeing that she licked her thin 
dry old lips twice, he said, “What is it?” 

“You aren’t going to keep her in New York?” she 
asked suddenly as if the warning spit of steam that pre¬ 
cedes an explosion had found its vent. 

“Keep her in New York?” said he, puzzled. 

The old woman suddenly walked to him, and breaking 
down all the artifice of a wall between them took one of 
his great hands between her own wrinkled, crosshatched 
palms. 

"I’ll tell you if they kill me for it,” she said. “I’ll 
tell you the truth.” 


The Lure 


45 


He stared at her. 

“You are a good man,” she said. “You’ll listen and 
you’ll do what’s right. Do you know the big secret about 
Vera—my Vera, as I call her now ?” 

“No.” 

“You must know it,” she said. 

“Go on.” 

“You know how she was born under canvas? Yes, 
sir! Her father was a spring-board-and-elephant jumper 
in the circus. That’s how he was killed. The mother 
was a bareback rider. Yes, sir. And this child—well, 
she had nothing but night performances and moving on 
and on from the beginning. She never liked it. She 
hates music even now, because she hated the sound of 
the circus band. Before she was five she was always 
making clothes for dolls. She wanted to play house. 
She wanted to get away from crowds. And when she 
was famous for two seasons as a child trapeze performer 
and her picture was on the boards as Marvella, the Child 
Butterfly, and people would see her on the street and say, 
‘That’s the child—Marvella,’ she would hide her face with 
her arms—like this—and burst into tears.” 

“Well?” said Brayley. 

“Well, she never changed, Mr. Brayley. No, sir. She 
was born with that in her. Of course she never could 
get away from that life. How could she? That was the 
cross she bore, sir.” 

The old woman clung to his hand. 

“Yes, sir,” she went on, looking up into his face, “life 
is often like that. We all want the thing we haven’t got, 
maybe. But think of a girl who wants a home and an 
evening lamp and slippers out for a husband and nice, 
quiet, respectable neighbors and the sound of the same 
church bells every Sunday morning and a house and posi- 


46 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

tion in some small place where she can get up in the morn¬ 
ing and sing after breakfast is over and maybe weed the 
flower garden!” 

“She says that?” he said in an awed and apprehensive 
voice. 

“Yes, sir. And think of her always doomed to being 
where there is nothing but lights and dancing and the 
theatrical world and late suppers and all that dull and 
stupid business that goes on day after day like an old 
worn-out, creaking mill! Why, sir, it’s heartbreaking— 
so it is!” 

The old lady was patting his hand now eagerly and 
for emphasis. 

“And think of her—who is as good as gold—being 
made out a vampire and a wrecker of homes, when even¬ 
ing after evening she sits right here with me embroid¬ 
ering things for a home she may never have—the kind 
of a home she wants. Well, that’s the secret, Mr. 
Brayley. Mr. Osgude would kill me if I told you, be¬ 
cause if it ever got out, where would we all be for success 
and money, eh? See how she is trapped—just because 
she can narrow her beautiful eyes and look like Cleopatra 
and Boadicea and Lucrezia Borgia! And when all she 
wants—and all she has ever wanted—is someone to come 
and take her away where all’s quiet and homelike, and 
she can go to bed at ten and maybe have a few hens in the 
back yard.” 

“Why, this can’t be so!” “The Man who would be a 
Prince” said doubtingly. 

“But it is, sir! Otherwise may I be struck down in 
my own blood. What do you suppose that canary and 
these goldfish mean? If it isn’t so, why are those cab¬ 
inet drawers over there filled with her embroideries 


The Lure 47 

and plans she has drawn for houses where she would 
like to live and sketches of homes under big arched 
trees ?” 

“You mean she draws pictures ?” he asked. 

“Yes.” 

“Let me see one.” 

Mrs. Taussig rose rheumatically and produced a sheet 
of drawing paper from the desk. He looked at it long 
and hard, several times passing his hand over his fore¬ 
head a9 if to brush away some confusion of ideas that 
pressed forward from within his head. 

“I’ll be dog-goned!” he said, holding the sketch out 
from him. “When did she draw this?” 

“Just last November, sir.” 

“Huh! A big square house—a picket fence—and trees 
hanging over—nasturtiums, maybe. Well, Til be dog- 
goned !” 

He looked up suddenly at Mrs. Taussig. He asked, 
“Then she isn’t?” 

“No, sir, she isn’t. She isn’t any vampire, I suppose 
you mean. No, sir, she’s just a soul all draped over with 
lies. God put a kind of lie into her body and her face— 
and Osgude and the others did the rest, sir.” 

Brayley was silent. 

“Well,” said he finally, “you said that some of us want 
just the thing we haven’t got. I suppose maybe that’s 
the real lure of life—the real lure.” 

“Yes, sir, it is!” said the old woman. “It is, until we 
get settled, sir. That’s why she cried so last night after 
you’d gone. Not that she didn’t love you. Only, when 
it was you—and she thought you were different and 
meant different when you spoke of love—why, at first 
she thought you meant to give her all she’d ever wanted 


48 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

and take her back to Ohio, and all of that. And when 
you spoke as you did, sir-” 

She threw her old arms apart in a gesture of tragedy. 

“But look here!” exclaimed Brayley. “She never said 
a word to me!” 

“And why?” said Mrs. Taussig. “Why? Because 
she loves you, sir. Because you told her your happiness 
was here, right in the very midst of all she wants 
to leave! Because she put your happiness first, Mr. 
Brayley—heaven bless her for that!” 

He may have turned a little white as he jumped up 
and stood with clenched hands. 

“Just let me alone to think,” he said. 

Mrs. Taussig took her hands off her hips, and taking 
the little Japanese tray with the empty cup and the cream 
she tiptoed out. 

He went to the window and stood with his forehead 
pressed against the icy pane, gazing out, down the river 
at the many-eyed city that he had thought he could love 
so well. There was the life he thought he could love 
and that he thought would be his only love! There was 
the life that he had hoped would learn to love him! There 
it was, with all its glamour and all its mystery! 

“But, after all, life is life,” he said aloud. 

He had his struggle. Perhaps with him and all he 
could give her he could satisfy her here after all. But 
he thought of all her dreams. They had been like his —* 
secret, long, unsatisfied, unfulfilled. 

“No, by heaven!” he said at last. “There can’t be two 
ways in this!” 

He went to the telephone. 

“Gimme long distance.” 

After a few moments he said, “I want to get Spurley, 
Ohio.” 



49 


The Lure 

When she came in she was rosy with the cold. 

“I thought you’d be here,” she said; and added, “Yes— 
waiting for me.” 

“I was.” 

Throwing aside her wraps and furs, she kissed 
him. 

“Maybe I ought to tell you I’ve kind of changed my 
mind,” he said. “I guess that we don’t want to live in 
New York, do we? How’d you like a small town out 
West? And say a big, square, white house under some 
maples, eh? Perhaps we’d really—well, kind of enjoy 
each other more in the long run in quiet, where we could 
have a regular home and so on. I guess maybe you 
were right about it. Anyhow-” 

She gasped. 

“Well, we can try it and see,” he answered. 

“You don’t mean it, Dick!” 

“Sure I do! Look here! I’ve got a photograph of 
the place I left. I took it to remember it by. That’s our 
old home in Spurley. I guess I’ve done Spurley an in¬ 
justice. It’s in a lovely country.” 

She looked and looked and looked at the picture. 

“Oh, Dick!” she exclaimed. 

“I suppose I ought to tell you I’d sold the place. Yes, 
to the undertaker—to Daniels, the undertaker. Put 
that’s all right. 

“Don’t you get scared. No. I just telephoned out to 
Spurley and bought it back. I thought maybe you’d 
like to live in a place like Spurley, where-” 

“What?” 

“Where you could be the first lady of the town and 
have a little garden out back and-” 

Her chin was on his shoulder, her cheek—the cheek 
of the famous Vera Savarin—was next to his. 





50 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“And then what?” she asked like a child hearing a 
fairy story and looking at the soiled picture. 

“Maple trees!” he said. “And two of them are sugar 
maples. You see, there’s a picket fence, painted white. 
There’d be a good place to plant a row of nasturtiums!” 
He pointed. 

“And then what?” she asked. 

“There’s a place for a swing between those two trees. 
It would be a good place for a child to play.” 

“One?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

“A thousand!” she exclaimed. 

After a moment she said, “So I’m going to have it 
after all?” as if she could not believe it. 

“Sure!” said he with a sudden note of understanding 
and pure joy. “The whole darn lure!” 


HERE’S HOW 


You know them. The Herringtons? 

Herrington was still young, even though there was a 
curious dried appearance on his skin. He had centered 
his attention upon being a sheep in the first line of the 
herd, and Gladys Herrington, his wife, in her way had 
done the same. What the Herringtons wanted was a 
good big, comfortable income. They wanted to be in 
the swim, as they called it. They wanted to keep as 
young as possible, have a good time, purchase the equip¬ 
ment. They wanted to be modern, smart, athletic, glib. 
If they had wished to express their purposes to them¬ 
selves, they would have said that they wanted to belong 
to the country club set. They envied the persons who 
had their pictures in the periodicals which review the 
doings of society at play. 

To the Herringtons smartness in a vague way meant 
bright-colored flannels, a feminine posture with hand on 
hip with that casual careless be-damned-to-you letter-S 
pose, as illustrated either in fashion plates or in photo¬ 
graphs of the Countesses at Deauville. Countesses are 
almost as common in Europe as ex-bolshevists, but of 
course the Herringtons did not know this. They con¬ 
sidered smartness included certain appointments like 
picnic baskets, vacuum bottles, Wells’s Outline of His¬ 
tory, which all their tribe in turn had begun, gilt edge 
bridge packs, Mah-jong outfits, a few words about Rus¬ 
sian plays, lip-sticks, nose powder, trapeze earrings, 
perfumery put on with a ladle, enameled finger nails, 
5i 


52 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

rather pointed, and a certain studied rudeness based on 
non-existent superiority. 

The mother and daughter both wore bobbed hair which 
gave them an air of camaraderie, as Gladys Herrington 
told her husband. It was the most sensible thing they 
did. 

Something could be said for two other of their attrac¬ 
tions. 

One was that the Herringtons were skilled in the kind 
of conversation which to grown persons represents what 
side-walk writing represents to children with a bit of 
chalk in their fingers and a vulgar phrase in their little 
minds, the full meaning of which is not yet understood. 
One of young Jackie Herrington’s college classmates 
appreciated the sidewalk writing skill of the family. He 
said: “I say, old man, it’s wonderful how a man can 
discuss almost anything with your people—right out! 
It’s modern and it’s bully! My family somehow don’t 
get around to it. But yours know so much about psycho¬ 
analysis, and Freud, and the new world we’re living in 
since the war, that smut is kind of denaturized. Now 
your sister is only fifteen, but I didn’t feel a bit strange 
when your mother was telling the reasons for that big 
Phillipson divorce.” 

Jackie Herrington snorted. “It’s a cinch,” he said. 
“The way to go into conversation like that is to have 
a red ticket or a pink ticket. The red ticket is science, 
my boy—pure science, new discoveries about our true 
selves. But the pink ticket is just light devilish stuff— 
kittenish. Two people who have just been introduced are 
going abroad. The girl says she will have to get a pass¬ 
port of her own unless she can paste her picture on the 
man’s passport. They don’t mean to do it. It’s just 


Here’s How 53 

cute talk—the pink ticket to a little thrill. That stuff 
kind of bores me. It’s for people over forty.” 

The Herringtons were good, attractive sidewalk 
writers, but they had a second attraction. They knew a 
bootlegger. No one ever knew whether John Herrington 
built his estate on a hilltop along the state road with a 
forward-looking estimate of social advantages, or 
whether destiny helped in the mainstay of the Herring¬ 
tons’ social position; in any case, they were just far 
enough out of New York so that returning motorists 
sighted their house thirstily at about tea time. Even 

the V- family sometimes shrugged their shoulders 

and went up. 

I will not forget my being taken into the Herring¬ 
tons’. It was late; it was dusk—an inviting dusk in 
Spring. We purred up their driveway, kicking the cor¬ 
rect blue gravel between nicely barbered lawns. We got 
out with dried lips, and just behind the house overlook¬ 
ing the tenth, eleventh and twelfth holes of the Country 
Club, was a pergola with perfect yellow wicker furniture 
and perfect light blue cushions and a perfect silver tray 
and little glasses standing on little embroidered napkins 
and a cocktail shaker with the frost on it. 

Mrs. Herrington clicked her rings on its bright silvery, 
tinkling sides, as she took it in a hand growing slightly 
pudgy, and her rather strident, smart voice inquired: 
‘‘Mrs. Carling, do you let your Julia have a taste—just 
a taste? Well, so do I with my Diana. It’s such a gen¬ 
eration, this new one! I can’t think what ails the world. 
It must have been the war. These modern children! I 
always think it’s better for parents to meet them at least 
half way—otherwise we’d lose control altogether! Wait 



54 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

a minute, Mr. Carling. I’ll give you your dividend when 
Julia has had her little taste.” 

Carling knocked a glass off the corner of the table. 
John Herrington looked at him with that shrewd look 
of a money-maker off duty. 

“Beastly stupid!” the guest said, centering his eye 
focuses again. 

Shrieks of laughter; the Herringtons and their friends 
were having a good time. One woman positively 
squealed; noise also is smart. Another woman snorted, 
for snorting is fashionable. 

Then I heard the voices of the hosts: “Here’s how!” 

Oh, well, there are plenty of Herringtons and I 
wouldn’t be bothering with them if it had not been for 
Jackie—Jackie, the representative of the new, modern, 
perplexing generation so utterly tired of its toys. 

Jackie had some suggestion in his face of his father’s 
aquiline features. His father, however, had birdlike 
eyes. One could never say whether they were the eyes 
of a barnyard fowl alert with fear of some possible 
menace about to pounce, or the eyes of a hawk about to 
do the pouncing. They were either the eyes of a creature 
of prey or a creature preyed upon. It was the ennobling 
acquisition of money which had given him this look. 
Possibly when he had been Jackie’s age he also had car¬ 
ried in his eyes that dreamy perplexity, that passionate 
kindliness and the curious irritability of youth, revolting 
against the fact that the world, like a beautiful cheek 
under a microscope, exhibited more and more disillu¬ 
sioning imperfections as one looked and looked. 

Youth is often enough glad to pretend to be bored, 
but there was a haunting tragedy on Jackie’s twenty-one- 
year-old face because his boredom was not a pretense. It 
was real. It dulled a face otherwise marked by persistent 


Here’s How 55 

health, by a desire to laugh if anything worth while 
could be found to laugh about, and by the fine, even 
bronze of outdoor life which ran into his neck, as grace¬ 
ful as a girl’s, and apparently continued down to his 
hands, strong but sensitive as any woman’s. Jackie 
brushed his dark hair straight back from his forehead 
over his head. It was the sheep way of doing it and 
pleased his mother as being somehow like society young 
men and young moving picture actors, all in one laudable 
conformity. Curiously enough, however, on Jackie it 
did not look conventional. It gave him the look of one 
who in a square-jawed way braves a terrific wind of life 
which is trying to blow him along with the other chaff. 

The Herringtons were proud of Jackie. He had rowed 
on the freshman crew and was said everywhere to be a 
perfect dancer. He could play golf with a graceful, ef¬ 
fortless ease. If he was bored and sometimes sank into 
long, gloomy silences, as if he found nothing in life into 
which he could sink the teeth of his young spirit, never¬ 
theless he never failed in conventional manners. He 
sprang up when a lady entered the room and made a 
great clatter about gallantry, which in these days has be¬ 
come a clattering business. His eyebrows were arched 
in two fine lines and he, like his mother, read what she 
called the current books so that he could discuss, as she 
did, from fictional examples, the problems, mostly cen¬ 
tering on the relationship of the sexes, upon which mar¬ 
riage appears to cast so dark a shadow. 

The Herringtons were proud of Jackie. They were 
proud of Diana, whose bobbed hair was golden and whose 
blue eyes were startled in a young thin-cheeked and yet 
aged face. Diana had a delightful intellectual daring. 
Originality was the key to her effect upon the world. At 


56 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

fifteen she had learned, or rather sopped up, the lesson 
that anyone is a fool to attempt to compete with the 
labors of others done yesterday. Philosophy, which 
would make the asses-ears lean forward, need only have 
one characteristic—it must be new. Music, in order to 
avoid competition with Beethoven and so gain distinc¬ 
tion, need only be daring and different. Diana, at fif¬ 
teen, modeled in clay. She could not bother to study 
anatomy and so her work, which rather took the breath 
away from the Herrington social circle, was done en¬ 
tirely by squeezing. While she worked she appeared to 
be in a kind of trance. The result had what a modernist 
painter—George Angelus—pronounced as “secondary 
meaning, or sculpture of the subconscious.” 

The Herringtons were satisfied. To be sure they never 
felt well when they got up in the morning. That was 
the hour or two of the day when they were all cross. 
That was the hour when Mrs. Herrington’s elbows were 
wrinkled and Diana’s were too bony. That was the hour 
when John, before going to deal with the market and 
production figures, snarled over his coffee, and when no 
word could be drawn from Jackie. To be sure there was 
always an irritating restlessness in the family. “What 
are we going to do now?” “Where are we going to¬ 
night?” “For heaven’s sake, let’s have some bridge!” 
“Let’s motor somewhere for a dinner—somewhere we’ve 
never been.” “Tell Andrew to bring up some cracked 
ice.” 

But the Herringtons were satisfied in the sense that 
they had all they could conceive of wanting. If they did 
not have spiritual peace, it could not be said they knew 
that it was obtainable or was worth a darn. If they 
could not satisfy Jackie, it was not because they or 
Jackie knew what would satisfy him. They had ex- 


Here’s How 57 

hausted excitements and could not invent new ones. 
They had traded romance for cynicism, adventure for 
imitations, calm for clatter. They were kittens trying 
to escape from themselves and yet always discovering 
that the attempt only resulted in chasing their own tails. 

No wonder Jackie, toward noon, liked to brace up with 
a little taste of alcohol in the midst of that atmosphere of 
sure contentment—that Herrington contentment of being 
in the swim, smart, respectably risque, graceful on the 

links and the waxed floor, and having the V- family 

stop its motor to say with the Herringtons, *‘Here’s 
how!” 

“Did you hear Jackie come in last night?” Gladys Her¬ 
rington even asked her husband one morning. “It 
sounded as if he had fallen in the hall.” 

John Herrington shrugged his shoulders. 

It was the only discussion the two had about Jackie. 

His sister, a year later, said: “J., if you were wise, 
you’d cut it out. It will give you a coarse face.” 

Only Jackie himself knew what was going on behind his 
own scenes. To him it seemed that the rush of life 
around him, with its gentle picking at mild sin and end¬ 
less hunger for excitement, was a kind of nightmare from 
which there was no escape. Even cocktails gave no 
escape. He hated his clothes, he hated his mother’s per¬ 
manent wave, which gave her blonde hair a kind of 
negroid frizziness, he hated the sound of jazz drums and 
the faces of the Mah-jong men spread out on the bridge 
table, and pert-nosed perfumed girls with cerise lips, and 
respectable parents who tried to make everyone think they 
were more indiscreet than their cowardice allowed them 
to be. Life, to Jackie, seemed to have an unpleasant, 
rancid odor. 



58 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

His family had no idea what he meant when, after a 
long silence, he sprang up one night from their dinner 
table and roared out: “My God! I can’t stand this any 
more!” 

His father joined the women in an opinion that Jackie 
had been drinking. He had not. John Herrington with 
a leer asked his son: 

“Why don’t you go to sea ?” 

“If I only could!” said Jackie. 

“My son is temperamental,” Mrs. Herrington told her 
daughter in confidence. “That accounts for it all.” 

“No, I’ll tell you what accounts for it,” said little 
Diana. “Being a darn fool accounts for it. If father 
would get him a new high-powered car, he’d be all right 
—for six months, anyhow. Jackie lost a lot of money 
at bridge last night; he needs diversion, Mother.” 

“I lost some myself,” replied Gladys Herrington. “I 
lost it to that tall vacuum bottle, Mrs. Hyde. She plays 
like a fool.” 

She put her arm around Diana’s shoulder. The other 
wriggled out. “It isn’t that I don’t love you, Mother, 
but your arm is beastly hot. I would not even let a fairy 
prince lean on me to-day.” 

Mrs. Herrington yawned and went to her writing desk 
to arrange a dinner. There were two kinds of dinners 
in her catalogue—dinners for fun and dinners for social 
gain. 

“We’ve got to have a pompous dinner this time, Diana. 
Everybody on their dignity,” she said, holding a pen¬ 
holder in her even, white teeth. “Your father will want 
to make a show for the Turners from Chicago.” She 
began to scribble a list of names, checking off the couples. 
“I believe I’ll have Jackie,” she said. 


Here’s How 


59 


“And me,” suggested Diana. 

“Don’t be absurd. What man would take in a girl of 
sixteen!” 

“You think I can’t flirt—that’s the truth,” asserted 
Diana. 

“Well, dinners aren’t for eating only,” said Mrs. Her¬ 
rington. “Besides, I don’t like you to talk that way, 
Diana. There is a limit even for the modern young girl.” 

“I’m not a modern young girl,” Diana said furiously. 
“There’s a difference. I’m a feminist. I’m a great deal 
more mature than Jackie, and better balanced, and you 
know it. I don’t want to have this rotten sex distinction 
begin right here in my own home.” 

“Nevertheless, it will be Jackie and not you, my dear.” 

Jackie was invited to the pompous dinner. 

He never sat down at it. 

He meant to dress rather early. Just before he went 
up to the bath and the shave that Andrew had laid out 
for him, he pushed his way into the pantry. 

“Give us a cocktail, Olga,” he said, punching the fat 
shoulder of the maid. 

“You just was after having one with your father.” 

“That’s only one leg. I’ve got to have two.” 

“But not three,” said Olga. 

“How do you get three?” Jackie asked, somewhat sur¬ 
prised. 

“You took something at the back door of the grocery.” 

“The sun of a gun told you on the telephone. How 
small the world is, after all! Give us!” 

He drank it down and ran upstairs to his room. 

He was slapping the razor back and forth when he 
heard the whistle. The tune was only a quaint old Irish 
crooning melody, but the whistle came up from the wood 


60 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

road which turns off toward Valleyville from the corner 
where one turns the other way to go to the Country Club, 
and Jackie understood. 

“What does she want, I wonder?” he said, pressing 
his nose against the copper mosquito screen. 

He was not thinking very clearly. The world had 
twisted a little askew. A pleasant sense of irresponsi¬ 
bility ! A warmth! The devil may care! And then the 
assurance of tremendous personal ability. And a rush 
of warm affection—the warmest, the realest thing in his 
life! 

“The realest thing in my life,” he said, addressing 
the whistle. She had taught him that little melody. How 
entrancing it was! If it had come across the ocean he 
would go to it, he said to himself, provided it came from 
the pursed lips—such lips!—of Cathleen Gillis. 

She was all that was sweet, and clean, and fine! There 
was a half-hour now, time to see her. He went down 
the back stairs. 

Moon and twilight mingled. Lights rosy from the 
west and lights pale from the moon’s broad face fell 
on the undulating grass-cropped hillside. Perhaps she 
could see him coming through the cool evening stillness, 
down the open slope and then between the steepled ever¬ 
greens. Perhaps she could hear the creak of the fence 
rail as he vaulted it into the fragrant fern-edged wood 
road to Valleyville. 

She was standing there in the middle of the road, tall, 
lean, black hair and deep blue eyes—the dark Irish- 
White of skin, forearms, neck and shoulders—cool, 
white. Her bones were strong, large, such as her race 
can grow and on which they live long and virilely. Even, 
strong, white teeth between thin lips, full of courage and 


Here’s How 


61 


dashing fire. A voice coming from deep, full lungs 
rather than the throat, but drifting over the thin, sensi¬ 
tive lips, always in a crystal—like the flow of clear 
springs. And in her eyes more love and tenderness than 
Jackie ever knew. To him she was a kind of goddess of 
integrity. She could think of lifetimes and centuries and 
historical epochs and the eternal passage of time, but 
he could not conceive any wear and tear to the immor¬ 
tal integrity of Cathleen. 

She was the daughter of an ex-saloon-keeper—old 
Martin Kelsey Gillis—the man with the kindly blue eyes 
looking out of puckered lips and wetting his dry lips 
with the tip of a tongue which was pointed for sharp 
wit and flexible with expressions of wisdom astride good 
nature, and well used to the right side of his mouth while 
his pipe laid claim to a freehold on the left. This was 
his Cathleen—second of four daughters—standing here 
on the road—her eyes full of fear, then of hope. 

“I told ’em it wasn’t true, Jack,” she said quietly. 

“What?” 

“They lied about you. Said you were taking liquor be¬ 
hind Benham’s grocery. I said it was a lie. They said, 
‘What do you care about him? He’s only a silk-gloved 
waster.’ I couldn’t tell them you’d given me your sol¬ 
emn promise, Jackie. And it wasn’t so, was it?” 

He laughed. “You’re great!” he said. “Simply alive 
with—something!” 

“But it wasn’t so?” she begged. “I want to know. 
You promised me.” 

“Well, I quit, didn’t I?” 

“I know, Jackie, but it wasn’t so, was it? Tonight? 
You didn’t break your promise?” 

“I asked you what you’d do if I did—remember!” he 
parried. “Ho! You said you’d kill me. Or was it beat 


62 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

me? And I said, what would you do that for if you 
wouldn’t marry me, eh? What was I to do?” 

“Everything, Jackie,” her voice replied with a little 
break in it. “For it’s me—only me—I’ve seen you as 
you are, Jackie, and I’d die to have you grow straight 
and tall like a tree that’s had its chance—toward the sun 
and the sky, dear.” 

“Well, if I did, would you then?” 

“Marry you? How could I, dear. I couldn’t, could 
I? What would your people say? You twenty-one and 
me twenty. And differences. Now, tell me it wasn’t so 
—you didn’t break your promise ?” 

He became suddenly shrewd; narrowed his eyes. “Do 
you expect me to answer that? I’ve too much pride.” 
He switched the subject quickly. “Besides, I’m no 
coward and no fool. Do you think I want any of those 
girls—those flabby, brazen-eyed flappers ?” He pointed. 

“At the Country Club?” she asked. 

Sounds of a phonograph with a dance record drifted 
down between the cool trees on the evening wind. 

“Yes,” he said. “Them. I’d rather have your little 
finger-!” 

“Hush,” she said. “You’re talking nonsense. “I’d be 
a canary among gold fish, dear, and well you know it. 
Not education, not willingness—but something else. 
That’s what we mustn’t forget. If it was me alone, be 
damned to them; but there is you. We’ve had our love, 
and all I want now, dear, is to know that you are all 
right—that you kept your promise. Tell me! It’s 
enough for me to know you are all right. Tell me! Why 
don’t you speak?” 

“I’ve got to go,” he said, kicking at the pine needles 
in the ruts. “I’m nothing much to anybody.” 

“Stop pitying yourself, Jackie. Be a man. Tell me!” 



63 


Here’s How 

“Whether I had a drink or not?” 

“Yes,” she said suddenly. “Why don’t you kiss me? 
Is it like you to go away without asking for that ? Why 
don’t you, now?” 

She pushed herself upright from the tree against which 
she had been leaning. 

“Boom, boom, boom”—and then a wail of savage 
delight of the dance tune came from the lighted windows 
of the club. A surge of challenge rose up within Jackie. 
With some of this wildness in his heated, throbbing eyes 
he stared at her. She was graceful as young plant growth, 
as the vine tendril reaching upward. And yet there 
was power in her, the power of sinew and strong frame. 
In her eyes was that clear light which for some mad 
reason Jackie wanted now to blow out, to see tamed and 
dulled. He wanted to conquer, to crush, to feel himself 
irresistible in domination over her. He had never felt 
this before. Was it the cocktails? Well, what of it? 
There was something delicious in this setting, too—these 
cool woods, the soft breath of evening, the peace, the sky 
with stars beginning to glimmer out of the misty blue 
heights. It was like the mad joy of profaning temples. 

“Kiss you?” he whispered between his teeth. “Yes! 
Yes! Yes! I’ll kiss you! You’ll never forget it! I 
will. Just a kiss. You’ll never forget it!” 

She covered her face with her arms protecting herself; 
too late. He had seized her in his strong embrace. He 
forced her elbows upward. His hand slipped from the 
cool flesh of her forearm and, his fingers catching in the 
sleeve of white batiste, it tore through hemstitching done 
by her own labor. 

The little protesting shriek of the material was sym¬ 
bolic of the terror—of things she feared and loathed, 


64 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

of things he loathed and yet would turn loose, in spite 
of fear. 

He found her lips. 

For a moment she could not move him away. But 
she was strong. His own feet were unsteady on the 
slippery pine needles. Panting, she flung him off. 

He saw her at first with her face buried in her hands. 
He heard her voice—full of grief, full of the suffering 
of the ages. It sent a pang to his heart. He was sick 
of body, sick of soul. 

“Oh, Jackie, you never have kissed me like that before. 
It wasn’t you, Jackie. Not your lips! It was some 
other man!” 

His arms dropped limply at his side. He gasped, “Be¬ 
fore God, Cathleen, I’m sorry.” 

“And your mouth,” she exclaimed suddenly. “It is 
foul with drink! Is this what love meant to you—and 
honor? Oh, you-!” 

She could not find a word; her revolt, her rage was 
too great. 

He tried to reach her hands. 

“Get away!” she said with eyes ablaze. “I’d kill you.” 

“No! No! It’s only me,” he said, flinging himself 
toward her. 

Her hand had found a broken pine branch leaning on 
the old stone wall behind her. She swung it straight at 
his white face. Heavier than she had supposed it, it 
dropped its weight on his temple and came with its rag¬ 
ged end tearing down through his cheek. 

He staggered and came down on his knees. His 
cupped hands on his chin filled with warm blood. 

“Do it again!” he said, smiling sweetly. “Do it again. 
But you love me! Yes, you do! It’s something to live 
for now. You love me.” 



Here’s How 65 

He knew a release had come to him; he felt a strange 
sense that this was the beginning of a new volume of life. 
A first book had been closed. Something had split down 
the back as when a moth emerges from a cocoon. Some¬ 
thing was free. His soul breathed new air. He was 
out! 

He came toward her on his knees and wrapped his 
arms about hers. 

“Can’t you see, Cathleen!” he whispered. “Now? 
Can’t you see! You’ve got to take me! I belong to 
you. You’re right. It wasn’t I who kissed you madly 
like that. That man has gone for good. And I don’t 
ask any favors of you, Cathleen, except one. Love me. 
Love me. Go on loving me forever. I can live up to it 
all, Cathleen. I’m free! I’m free!” 

She looked up for a moment into the darkening sky 
above the somber, motionless tops of the trees. “God 
knows what I should do,” she said. “I’m at my wit’s 
end.” 

She sat down. “Come here, Jackie,” she said, holding 
out both arms. “You’re a darling human thing. Come 
here. You may be a fine, strong man, but you need help 
now.” 

He buried his bleeding face in her lap. He could feel 
her cool body bending over him and her arms enfolding 
his aching head in a tenderness and a love he never 
had known before—a selfish love, a thing which seemed 
as eternal as the hills, as precious as the sight of a divine 
countenance. His body shook with broken nerves and 
grief and joy and fear lest there should be an awakening 
from an unreality. 

“There, Jackie, there,” she whispered. “God forgive 
me, I love you. I, who ought not to say it—I don’t want 


66 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

anything to take you away from me ever. Maybe I can 
give you more than anybody, Jackie. I’d try. I’d give 
what I could—all I can. Oh, I shouldn’t talk this 
way.” 

“Why not?” he said. “It’s truth, isn’t it? Where 
have I been drifting to without you, Cathleen? What 
does all the rest mean to me ? It’s all rotten and false and 
steals into you like a poison. I’d rather go to work with 
my two hands, Cathleen.” 

He straightened up. 

“I’d like to begin all over—ever since I was born,” he 
said. “I’d like the fight. I’d like life to smash me in 
the face so’s I could hit back. Will you do it, Cathleen— 
with me?” 

She touched his face here and there with her hand¬ 
kerchief. 

“It will leave a scar,” she said. 

“Thank God.” 

“Let’s go away, Cathleen. Let’s go tonight Let’s do 
it now. Let’s ride over the state line and be married.” 

“No, no, no.” 

“Isn’t it the best thing for me, Cathleen? Before God, 
isn’t it?” 

She thought a long time, her deep eyes staring into the 
quilted moonlight among the trees. 

“Yes,” she said in a firm voice. “It would be the best 
thing for you—the best thing in the world if I prove 
any good at all.” 

“Maybe not for you, Cathleen?” he inquired. “But I’d 
never fail you, dear.” 

She was thinking. 

“We’d never have to come back, Jackie. I mean to 
stay. Would you refuse all help outside ourselves? 
Would you fight alone, along with me? Would you turn 


Here’s How 67 

your back on all that’s gone before and trust to our 
youth and strength, Jackie?” 

“Yes.” 

“I believe you would.” 

“It’s a promise, old girl.” 

He kissed her softly on her smooth forehead. 

“I’ll get the car,” he said. “I’m free! Hear that! 
We’ve found our own way, Cathleen! We always will! 
Our own way! 

He had a vivid sensation. It was that if he did not 
give and take love now, there would die in him all power 
to give and take love—that always and forever there 
would be a hole as if the capacity for loving had been 
scooped out with a surgeon’s spoon. 

The maid, Olga, who was helping Andrew serve, 
brought in the canape to follow around the ring. This 
ring always appeared to Olga as an impersonal ring of 
low-necked dresses and white shirt fronts. When she 
came to Mrs. Herrington, she whispered: 

“Young Mr. Herrington, ma’am.” 

“Yes, where is he? We are waiting.” 

“He’s gone, ma’am.” 

Mrs. Herrington had a good social face. She covered 
this little conversation by saying in a louder voice. “Of 
course, Olga. Just light the candles”; and then, in a 
lower voice, “Gone where?” 

“I don’t know, ma’am. He merely spoke at the pantry 
window. Said he was called away hurriedly. You 
shouldn’t expect him.” 

“John!” Gladys Herrington was apparently quite at 
ease. “John, my dear. Jackie is ill. ,, 

“Hello,” said Herrington. “That’s odd. Nothing 
serious ?” 


68 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Serious enough to make thirteen. Can’t you tele¬ 
phone over to the club and get Barnette. He’s the prompt¬ 
est full dress change man I know.” 

There was a clamor of laughter. Mrs. Carling gave 
vent to little squeaks and squeals in the latest fashion, 
and Mr. Turner from Chicago snorted smartly. The 
uproar went out through the open windows and joined 
the noise of a buzzing self-starter which turned into the 
hum of a powerful motor. A shadow of a gentleman 
was projected out onto the wall of the wing of the house 
—a grotesque shadow, waving its arms about in some 
excitement of insane proportions. 

“I never knew anybody such a hostess as Mrs. Her¬ 
rington!” gurgled Marcella Le Feore, who had just come 
back from Europe minus her former ties. “She is never 
upset. And I haven’t seen Barnette since the Palm Beach 
houseboat days! It’s glorious.” 

“How do you make your cocktails, Herrington?” 
asked Turner. “I drop a dash of common kitchen al¬ 
mond flavoring into mine. But I use synthetic gin. 
These are delicious!” 

Someone’s words came rising up about plays. The 
red-haired lady with the long white, white arms, as white 
as her white chiffon Greek gown, said, “I dote on little 
theaters and companies formed to improve the drama. 
The revues may be daring as to what they take off in 
clothing but after all there’s nothing quite so thrilling 
as the mind completely stripped.” 

“What’s the new line from the poem?” said a man 
with puckered eyebrows. “Oh, would the power be 
given to show us as only we ourselves can know us.’ ” 

“Oh, that’s rather horrid of you.” 

And so on until Barnette came. The Herringtons’ 
party was being a great success. 


Here’s How 69 

Indeed it went on merrily for all the main courses, 
without interruption to its gaiety. Diana Herrington, 
upstairs, said to Olga who brought her tray, “I know 
Mamma is pleased. She knows when a party is pleased. 
She knows when a party is going! She says to listen— 
just stop and listen. If the chatter sounds like putting 
in the winter’s coal down an iron chute, all is very, very 
well! And this one sounds like tons of coal!” 

“Anything else, Miss?” 

“Where did Jackie go? You know. Go ahead—tell 
me.” 

“I hope to be struck down blind if I know,” protested 
Olga, picking up two pair of Diana’s silk stockings from 
various places on the floor and hanging them over her 
white cuffs. “No, indeed! it’s very mysterious. He’s a 
brooding boy, Miss Diana, and heaven only knows what 
those who scowl and think in secret have in their minds. 
He ought not to brood—Mister Jackie. He has every¬ 
thing he wants.” 

“Oh, has he?” said young Diana in a tone which made 
Olga look up quickly. 

“I must be ready to help with the coffee, Miss.” 

“You better answer the telephone, then. It’s ringing. 
Just listen to it!” 

Olga came on to the porch where the candles flickered 
in the cool breeze and threw their tumbling rays on 
the nodding white heads of flowers in the garden. 
There was well-fed, well-stimulated satisfaction among 
the groups about the little tables. Faces came for¬ 
ward, now and then, into the light with the shadow- 
emphasis on smug mouths, or embittered mouths, or 
bright lip-stick pencilings. The servant tiptoed toward 
John Herrington’s car. All that Mrs. Carling heard her 
say was, “But the operator insists, sir. Very important.” 


70 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

While he made his reluctant visit to the telephone, 
Gladys Herrington pushed her guests toward the bridge 
tables, just within the long French windows of the li¬ 
brary. Only the red-haired and white-armed lady and 
Barnette remained in the porch hammock, arranging 
meetings which they knew would never take place after 
the plans were viewed in the light of morning. Andrew 
brought in a tray of tall glasses and Scotah, and a bowl 
of ice, and when John Herrington returrred, the players 
at his table were so eager to begin that they did not notice 
how white his face was, nor that his skin, stretched over 
his aquiline, acquisitive features, appeared a little more 
dry than ever. 

“Come on, John/’ said Carling. “Let’s get started. 
Leave your business behind you at the office, old man. 
Telephone the brokers in the morning.” 

Herrington poured out a stiff dose and gulped it down. 

“There’s nothing to be done about it tonight,” Carling 
said, still thinking of market quotations. 

“No, nothing,” said Herrington grimly. “Who’s 
dealing?” 

That curious silence fell which marks the opening of 
the game. Smoke from a cigar—blue and Delphic— 
swirled upward around the onyx bowl of the lighting 
fixture and rolled across the library table with its neatly 
arranged bright-covered magazines. Looking out into 
the blue-black night, Herrington could see the moonlight 
on the hillsides and the bright yellow eyes of the Country 
Club; he could hear the drifting notes of the jazz tune 
from the phonograph. This was gaiety! 

“Oh, beg pardon,” he said suddenly. “My play?” 

He caught the gaze of his wife—the triumphant ex¬ 
pression of the successful hostess. He saw the glint of 
light in her golden hair as she turned her head to look 


Here’s How 71 

about the room. How young her neck appeared! 
There was a moment’s illusion that she was not over 
thirty. Hfe* gown was becoming. There was a smile 
of satisfaction on her lips—the smile of one who has 
everything one can conceive, as the proper appointments 
for life. Turner, with his cards held close to his white 
shirt, was glancing covertly at her shoulder. Then there 
was the tinkle of ice, too. And the clock over the brick 
fireplace—ticking off the creep—the surreptitious, sneak¬ 
ing, onward creep of time—toward some kind of final 
curtain. A gold cigarette case was leaning against the 
clock; it was Jackie’s. 

The curious numbness which had settled into the veins 
of Herrington disappeared when only Turner and his 
wife remained. The games had finished. Crisp bills 
had made a fleeting impression on the eyes and there 
had been a kind of outpouring of the guests like the im¬ 
pulse toward the mouth of an inverted bottle. Shrieks 
of laughter, low voices, swinging colors when wraps 
went over bare shoulders, slamming of motor doors, 
lights like monsters’ eyes flashing on the tree trunks 
down the hill. Away! Away! Good night! Good 
night! Gone. 

Herrington was saying to Turner: “You’ll have time 
to spare at the station. Next trip you better spend the 
night. We’d be delighted!” 

He heard his own voice as he heard Gladys saying to 
Mrs. Turner. “Oh, you must read it. Just take it along 
with you—no need to return it. I know! It’s so hard 
to keep up with one’s reading nowadays.’’ 

The women kissed each other and somehow he felt 
this was a false and reprehensible show of affection—one 
of millions of life’s motions which were only motions— 
idle habitual?, petty untruths, too small to oppose one by 


72 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

one, too great in the mass to challenge without having 
them rise up and fall over on him and smother him—as 
they had! 

He went wearily back to the library and flung himself 
down into a chair, staring at the cards with their em¬ 
phatic black and red spots where the gusts of night wind 
had scattered them. One of his hands, unaided by his 
eyes, felt around on the silver tray for one of the tall 
glasses. 

“Well, what ails you, John?” asked Gladys Herrington, 
yawning behind a beringed hand. 

He looked up at her, silent. 

Andrew came in and said in a low tone: “He insists 
on seeing you, sir.” 

“Who insists?” 

“Martin Gillis, sir—the old man. He's been waiting 
half an hour in the dark of the porch, sir. He was will¬ 
ing for the guests to go, but now he says it's quite neces¬ 
sary. He’s wrought up, sir.” 

“Send him in.” 

“What’s the matter, John?” asked Gladys. 

“I was about to tell you. There’s no hurry now. It's 
done. Jackie has a wife. He telephoned. He's gone 
away with her and he’ll be back. God knows when. 
He’s married Cathleen Gillis.” 

Mrs. Herrington stared and then suddenly clutched her 
two cheeks in tense, digging fingers which scattered little 
clouds of powder. 

“Why, he doesn’t know her—that child. She fused to 
bring berries. It seems only yesterday. We surely will 
not allow any such thing. Her father was a saloon¬ 
keeper. He used to have the place where the drug store 
is now!” 


Here’s How 73 

Herrington made a motion with his head towards the 
door. Martin Gillis stood in it, his hat swung down in 
one hand; the other palm was wiping across his lips. In 
his blue eyes there was a fire worthy of attention. 

“Yes, I’m that man,” he said and pointed to the empty 
glasses standing all about. “There was less drunkenness 
in this town, ma’am when I served more and you less. 
And there was no gambling at my place. But that is 
neither here nor there. I came for a reckoning.” 

His voice broke. 

“Where’s my little girl? Where’s my Cathleen? For 
God’s sake, it isn’t true? Your son hasn’t married her, 
as I hear? Don’t tell me that!” 

“I fear it’s so,” Herrington said in a frightened voice. 
“They have telephoned. And by the way,” he added with 
a touch of kindness, “they tried to get you on the wire. 
She did.” 

The old man sat down and his head fell forward. 

“Where was my eyes!” he moaned. “Where was my 
senses? I knew nothing. It’s too late! It’s too late!” 

Mrs. Herrington had been dabbing her eyes with a 
tiny embroidered handkerchief which, now limp and wet, 
she flipped about as if to dry it. 

“Why should a catastrophe come like this?” asked 
Martin Gillis. “What have I done to deserve it? If it 
had been any other young man-” 

“Any other!” exclaimed Mrs. Herrington. “Any 
other? Any other than Jackie?” 

The old man looked at her steadily, saying nothing. 

“You needn’t think we are going to fail in meeting 
the situation,” John Herrington asserted in further ex¬ 
planation of their position. “It has been a terrible blow, 
of course. But, Mr. Gillis, we will receive your daugh¬ 
ter. JVe will-” 




74 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Receive her—is it!” the other said, springing up. 
“Who wants you to receive her? Better a hundred times 
that you drive her from yer door. What’s the matter 
with ye, man? God forbid she ever step across this 
threshold!” 

Mrs. Herrington’s eyes flashed anger. She exclaimed: 
“What do you mean—talking in this way! You can’t 
come here and say these things. You fail to see the 
difference between your position and ours.” 

The Gillis eyelids, usually so full of kindly humor, 
narrowed into anger more dangerous than the simple and 
untutored Herringtons could recognize; the voice low¬ 
ered into a thin pipe. 

“I see the difference,” he said. “Well I see it, and well 
I estimate it. And now you can listen to me—damn ye, 
that have stolen my dearest away from me! I know my¬ 
self full well, and my sins. Who am I? Martin Gillis 
and an ex-saloon-keeper, and I have no delusions at all.” 

He half crouched like a terrier about to leap at a nest 
of rats. 

“Well, they closed me down, and maybe ’twas a good 
thing. But when, I asks, is there to be a law which will 
close down this place?” 

He stamped upon their floor. 

“And the likes of it! When will there be a law and 
an enforcement which will close you down?” 

“Close us down?” the woman repeated as if stunned. 

“Yes, ma’am. Bad as you can make me out, I never 
made drunkards out of boys and girls. You have!” 

“We!” Herrington said. 

“Yes, sir, maybe you think that we who live in the 
village hear nothing and see nothing. It was the young 
Maynard boy who learned his tricks here, and what’s he 


Here’s How 


75 

worth now? And I’ve seen you spreading cocktails and 
cards and foul talk—yes, that’s what it is—foul talk, as 
yer own servants know very well—before girls sixteen 
and eighteen and maybe younger. What in Heaven’s 
name do you think ever went on in my place that would 
be worse for ’em—boys and girls—than that? Why, a 
sensible parent would say to its child, 'Are ye going out 
tonight? Very well, then; if ye must drop into old man 
Gillis’s place, but mind for the good of yer soul that ye 
keep off the Hill where them Herringtons live!’ That’s 
the truth and people will wake up to it sooner or later. 
Maybe even the ministers and parsons will—if they 
dare.” 

"The man is mad,” Mrs. Herrington gasped. "Stark 
mad!” 

Gillis paid no attention to her. His grief had over¬ 
come him again. He said to someone, but nobody present 
in that belittered room, "Little Kitty—my darling. Wife, 
if ye can hear and see, what will ye say now?” 

"The man is mad,” reasserted Mrs. Herrington. 
"John! Are you going to let this creature talk to re¬ 
spectable people like this? Here in our own library?” 

"No!” 

He walked toward Gillis, his body taking the lines of 
menace. 

"You can go,” he said. "We were prepared to be 
decent about your daughter—to face the inevitable—to 
welcome her here. Now go!” 

"Maybe your Jackie would have the sense to keep 
himself and her out of it all,” Gillis said, failing to rec¬ 
ognize threats and catching at some kind of hope which 
had glinted in his mind. 

"Get out!” said Herrington, pushing the other’s 
shoulder. 


76 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Me?” asked Gillis. 

“Yes, you! Or I’ll put you out.” 

“Oh, no, ye’ll not,” the other said with sudden real¬ 
ization. 

His alert old hand swung on to Herrington’s wrist and 
fastened there like a tourniquet. He twisted the host’s 
forearm until there was a creaking at the elbow and a 
gasp of pain. Herrington went down on his knees, in a 
torment of agony. 

“Ha!” said the old grizzled Irishman. “You oughter 
have a bouncer in your establishment. It would have 
saved ye that trouble ye had one night when young 
Beacham wouldn’t pay his bridge debt!” 

Mrs. Herrington was frightened now, but she was no 
woman to lose her tact in a crisis. 

“Let my husband go,” she said. “We are all excitable 
—naturally. And now, Mr. Gillis, let me talk to you. 
You only hear absurd tales of our life. It is often true 
that the—lower—the—well—people who are not in our 
position—picture us living in a way which is far from 
the truth—exaggerated ideas, if you understand what I 
mean, Mr. Gillis.” 

“I understand ye very well.” 

“Well, then, you must realize that we have our prob¬ 
lems. The modern boy and girl is one—a great prob¬ 
lem. You spoke of boys and girls. Heaven knows what 
would happen if we parents did not make companions 
of them and keep contact so that we can exercise re¬ 
straint. It is the younger generation-” 

“Yes,” said John Herrington. “The younger gen¬ 
eration.” 

“Go on,” said Gillis indulgently. “I’ll hear ye 
through.” 



Here’s How 77 

“But that is all,” said Mrs. Herrington. “It is the 
younger generation.” 

“It is, my eye!” said Gillis. “Beg pardon for saying 
it, but ye needn’t ever blame youth for anything, ma’am. 
Give youth half a chance and it will be sweet and clean 
and reach out for all that’s good, ma’am. I see it very 
different.” 

Herrington, who was still nursing his red wrist, said 
almost respectfully, “How different?” 

“Well, you’d maybe be surprised to hear me say so— 
for I’m nobody, but I’ve seen the world change right 
in my own lifetime. Those who had money for genera¬ 
tions—like my own landlords in the old country—they 
knew how to use it. They knew how to live with a 
kind of peace and they weren’t like drug fiends for ex¬ 
citement. But money has got into queer hands. That’s 
the size of it. Cheap people have got it, ma’am. And 
then-” 

Mrs. Herrington sniffed. 

“Well, then-” said Gillis, trying to express some¬ 

thing which was muddy in his own mind. “Well, then— 
folks go to galloping. Many’s the day I’ve said it was 
an evil time when you and the likes of you come to this 
town, but I’ve been sorry for ye, at that. Ye are like 
wild creatures. Have ye seen moths around an arc 
light? They are excited and crazy for excitement and 
they are flying nowhere and there’s no peace in them. 
And with you it’s paints and powders, cards and booze, a 
wish to swap old mates for new, to be in Paris and Palm 
Beach and the Desert of Sahara all at once, new smells 
and new colors and new tastes, new clothes and new doc¬ 
tors. Happiness is an apple hanging over yer head, but 
ye are off and away after apples, painted on the sky.” 

He sighed. 




78 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“And mark me—it’s not boys and girls. When I see 
them flappers, as they call ’em, I see girls who are doing 
what their mothers have been whispering about these 
long times—and even then not quite fetching it.” 

His anger rose suddenly. He was addressing a greater 
audience than the two Herringtons. 

“A fine lot of parents ye are!” he exclaimed. “Blaming 
it on the younger generation. Hear ’em! Saying it’s the 
boys and the girls! Why, yer own Jackie is the best of 
the lot of ye. The only one worth saving out of the 
litter. He’s well rid of ye! And no wonder he flew the 
coop. Yer own daughter—her who is sixteen and yet 
forty-five-!” 

“Nothing is the matter with my daughter,” Mrs. Her¬ 
rington whipped out. “She is a satisfied, happy girl!” 

“Is that so?” demanded the old man. “Is that so? 
Why does she come down sometimes and sit in a church 
that she don’t belong to and knows nothing of? I ask 
you that?” 

“What church ?” 

“Our church,” Gillis said. “What was she doing in 
there last week—last Thursday—on her knees—with 
tears on her cheek, fer I seen it with my own eyes. What 
was she reaching out for?” 

“Reaching out for?” repeated Herrington with a wild 
look of frightened perplexity. “What could she be— 
reaching out for?” 

“God knows,” said Gillis. “Something! That’s sure. 
Something!” 

And then suddenly he threw up his hands and snatched 
up his hat. 

“There’s nothing more to be said,” he announced. “Ye 
are two poor devils. I’m sorry for ye both. Yer drunk 
and blind and gropin’ in the dark—and beatin’ on your 



Here’s How 79 

own drums so loud ye can hear nothing of the song of 
life. Blind and gropin’, and I’m sorry for ye, and may 
God forgive me for cornin’ here this night.” 

Stopping for a moment at the door, he swung his short 
body around and surveyed the room—the room with its 
mingled odors of cigar smoke and perfumery and the 
cool, grassy smell of the midnight, the room with its 
scattered playing-cards and a filmy, gay-colored Spanish 
shawl thrown over a chair back, and the clock ticking on 
and on, and John Herringtdn and Mrs. Herrington, 
astounded, staring and staring. 

From the Country Club the night wind brought the 
sound of a dance tune, which flickered like a candle 
flame, and from the pantry the faint click of dishes being 
washed in the sink—once more. 

After five minutes, Herrington looked toward his wife. 
“Look here, Gladys,” he said. “We ought to call a halt 
somehow.” 

She nodded and burst into tears. 

It was Sunday. Herrington had had his morning golf 
and his dinner and his cigar. He sat on the terrace look¬ 
ing out at the view. There was the soft undulation of 
the hilly sky-line and the tufted dark green of the pines 
in, the valley road and the more tender and feminine green 
of the golf course over which tiny figures—dots of white, 
gray, and red—moved from tee to tee. An ant at Her¬ 
rington’s feet was dragging a dead beetle. It went off 
for assistance and another ant came. Herrington could 
have watched the skilled engineering of this pair of 
freight handlers. He could have seen where they were 
going and why, but he was restless. He jumped up and 
began pacing up and down as if the terrace were a 
cage. 


80 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

Later when he went into the library, he found a novel 
with its back broken open spread on the rug beside the 
upholstered chair and Gladys walking up and down, 
up and down, as if the library were a bear pit. 

“Not a word more from Jackie,” she asserted. 

“No, not since the declaration that he preferred to 
be on his own.” 

“Heartless! That’s what he is,” said the mother. “He 
must know how he is breaking my heart.” 

“Is he?” Herrington inquired coldly. 

There was a long silence. 

“I wish we could get away. Can’t you take me 
abroad—to Italy?” she asked. 

Herrington laughed a short guffaw. “I can’t leave 
my business. Besides, as the old nigger said, ‘Remember, 
honey, when you go away you don’t go away from 
yohself.’ ” 

His wife stopped her pacing and stared out at the 
sunlit landscape with a dull sadness in her eyes. 

“Where’s Diana?” he inquired. 

She pointed upward to the second floor with all four of 
her fingers. The sunlight flashed viciously from an 
emerald on the third. 

“It’s nearly five,” she said. “What a long day! Do 
you hear a motor ?” 

He looked out. 

“Yes. It’s the Billingses’ car. They must have been 
motoring in Connecticut.” 

“They’re coming in here, aren’t they?” she asked 
eagerly. 

Mrs. Herrington pressed a wall bell. “Of course they 
are. It’s been a week since anybody came. The rain 
keeps everyone at home,” she said. “Dull, stupid inven¬ 
tion of nature—rain!” 


8i 


Here’s How 

Diana was sitting in her window upstairs. She was 
sitting with a pencil, putting the point of the sharpened 
lead into one another after another of the squares made 
by the copper wire of the mosquito screen. On the win- 
down sill were manicure scissors, a round little box of 
some kind of pink paste, a nail pousher, orange-wood 
sticks and a piece of newspaper torn out of a Sunday 
edition with a poem printed on it. 

Diana brushed her golden hair back from a forehead 
too perplexed for her age. The skin was too transparent 
and too tightly pulled across the skull. Diana was a 
pretty little thing, nevertheless. In spite of a kind of 
empty look, she was pretty. She brushed her hair back 
and with a bored expression she watched Andrew pulling 
the yellow wicker chairs and the yellow table out under 
the pergola where now blue grape clusters were dangling 
overhead. 

When she looked again the chairs were occupied by 
the Billingses. Billings was the vice-president of some 
big bank. His wife had had nervous prostration for two 
years and was cured by a psychoanalyst. 

“I can’t see that she’s any different,” said Diana aloud. 

And there was the Billings youth—a Princeton man. 
He had tried to kiss Diana once. She had no wish to go 
down. The voices below came up like a distant squawk¬ 
ing of birds—tiresome, she thought, and- offensive to the 
ear. She believed she had tolerated that clatter of voices 
out of which a word came here and there with a clear 
but senseless definition, for at least three-quarters of 
an hour. 

Suddenly Diana saw another motor stop down in the 
road where the long driveway begins. 

“Jackie!” she exclaimed. “Jackie—Oh, Jackie! And 
Jackie’s wife!” 


82 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

They had come at last. They were walking up the hill 
arm in arm. Funny they didn’t drive in. Maybe- 

Now Jackie had left Cathleen. How happy they had 
looked together. How pretty Cathleen was—young, 
straight, lithe strength! There she stood under the oak 
while Jackie came up nearer and nearer, almost under 
her window! She could shout out to him—her brother— 
her own brother. He opened the gate a little way and 
looked in. 

The Billingses! The Billingses! And the yellow wicker 
with its blue cushions. And the tray. And a voice say¬ 
ing clearly and loudly: “There really is nothing to do 
on Sundays here. That is why we are thinking of an 
apartment in New York.” It was his mother’s voice. 
And there was the silver shaker and the bowl of ice. And 
Mrs. Billings puffing blue smoke between lips that even 
from that distance were cerise. 

Jackie turned around. He went back to Cathleen and 
spread his hands apart. Diana could see. There was 
an argument. 

Then at last Cathleen started to come up alone. 

Diana from her window watched her new sister-in- 
law come nearer and nearer. She could even see that 
clear, deep blue of Cathleen’s eyes and the few freckles 
upon her fine, characterful nose. Diana remembered 
when Cathleen used to bring berries—years ago? Why 
wouldn’t the other look up? 

She did. 

She looked up, and, startled at the sight of Diana, she 
stopped short. 

Diana threw her a kiss, but she pointed to the garden 
and shook her head. It was like a dear voice saying, 
“I love you. Go away.” 



Here’s How 83 

All that Diana did in fact say was one little suppressed 
message: “I’ll come and see you.” 

Cathleen’s forehead knit into a little scowl of perplex¬ 
ity, but she went back to Jackie. He nodded in response 
to whatever she may have said and without looking back 
they walked down to their car. Diana heard the self¬ 
starter buzzing. A moment later she saw the car come 
out from the trees in the valley road. 

“They’ll have to sell that,” she said. 

And then suddenly, as if a powerful hand had come 
down on her shoulder, she bent forward. She could 
see the little dust cloud far off now. 

“Jackie!” she said aloud. “Jackie, dear, you’ve 
escaped!” 

She flung her forehead down on to her bare forearms 
and shook with her despair. 

Outside in the garden Andrew shuffled around. 

“Who ordered these?” asked Mrs. Herrington. “Did 
you, John?” 

“No—but since they are here-” 

Billings laughed in his deep, rumbling, grateful way. 

“You people are the best representatives of our 
younger generation,” he said. “You weren’t going to 
give up your hilltop customs, eh?” 

Gladys Herrington looked a little frightened, as if 
Billings had threatened the Herringtons with extinction. 
“Why—why—no!” she replied. 

Diana heard her father’s voice; he had cleared his 
throat. 

“Here’s how.” 

The Herringtons were reaching out—for excitement. 

You know the Herringtons. 





THE MAN WITH THE METAL FACE 


“You do not suppose I wanted this thing done?” 

“I assumed it. The proposal was not mine.” 

“You ought to know it is not like me to get into this 
kind of thing.” 

She listened to the cold hard voice of this supreme 
egoist, resting her magic-working finger tips on the other 
edge of his desk and calmly studying him with frank 
deep-blue eyes. 

“You wouldn’t come to my studio,” she said lightly. 
“And I do not think I would have considered working 
in the office of any other man.” 

“Then why in mine? Because I offered to pay what¬ 
ever you asked?” 

“No. Not at all. I wanted to do your head.” 

“Well! Well!” 

He was impatient; he was pleased. 

“Is this to be done for your possession ?” she asked. 

“No—my mother.” 

Her face lighted imperceptibly. 

“She wanted it. Pride, mother’s pride. And as she 
has never made up her mind to leave the old home and 
come on to New York—well, you understand. A 
present.” 

“I think I do.” 

Haslam began to rustle the papers in a drawer. He 
was through with this preliminary conversation with 
her. Beatrice Wheaton had heard of him that he could 
show the end of his interest in anyone, even in the case 
84 


The Man with the Metal Face 85 

of distinguished high commissioners of the Allies who 
had wanted to make him a superpurchasing agent during 
the war; M. Haslam at thirty-eight closed interviews as 
a king closes them, dismissing one or many of his sub¬ 
jects. He now had closed this interview. 

Nevertheless, when he looked up after several minutes 
she was still there gazing at him. He was not skilled in 
women’s faces; he did not often look into them, and cer¬ 
tainly he never looked into them as one looks at the con¬ 
tour of a country which beckons exploration. He saw 
only a young woman, not tall, whose eyes were of the 
clearest penetrating quality, so that at once they im¬ 
pressed one as being the center of her personality. She 
was not a glorious beauty, but an eternity of good health 
appeared to flow out from her like a kind of golden aura. 
Her hair, perhaps, gave that suggestion. Some long- 
nourished sadness half covered with a certain bitterness 
of expression was disclosed about her mouth. 

“Well? Well?” 

“I think they are wrong,” she said. 

“Who?” 

The ticker on his desk interrupted her answer. He 
seized the narrow tape, glancing at the little blue figures 
hungrily. She wondered how this hunger could grow 
so keen. What would he do with more money? At 
thirty-five he had amassed his fortune. Speculator, pro¬ 
moter, manager—keen, resourceful, famed. How could 
he make so much obeisance to a little tape when the sea 
around Capri was so blue, the night cries of Wuchang so 
stimulating to the imagination, the laughter of children 
of the filthy streets of the East Side so promising of 
Eternity ? 

“Who is wrong?” 

“They.” 


86 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“They?” 

“Those who have spoken of your appearance.” 

“Yes, yes. What do you mean?” 

“I think there are two depths in your face, Mr. Has- 
lam. I am looking for the deeper.” 

He glared at her sternly. “I am not used to looking 
at myself very much,” he said in a chilled voice. “The 
last newspaper man or magazine reporter or whoever it 
was said this of me.” 

He picked up a clipping and read: “ ‘Haslam has one 
initial, M. It is said in the biographical sketches that M. 
stands for Manfred, but no one calls him Manfred, and 
he signs only M. His most intimate friends call him 
Em. It is said that only two persons take that famil¬ 
iarity. One is his mother, and the other a barber in 
Nolan, Illinois, who used to go to school with Haslam 
and licked him in a fight.’ ” He read this passage and 
then waved his long fingers. “That’s not the part,” he 
said. “Here. Yes. ‘Haslam has a face like agate ware. 
He is handsome, virile, and carries a fine dignified head. 
It is a head of bronze. When anyone goes to an art 
gallery one may be impressed by a bronze bust, but one 
does not go to an art museum to make an impression on 
such a head. Haslam is like a thing of stone or metal; 
he may or may not make an impression on you, but you 
certainly never may hope to make one on him—and see it. 
He is unmarried. He has a metal face.” 

He paused with a smile of satisfaction. He said, “That 
is all I know—what they say. Are you sure you care as 
much as you did?” 

“To work on you? Yes.” 

“Where is your studio, Miss Wheaton ?” 

“Why?” She looked back at him steadily. 

“I am not sure this is the best place to make a portrait.” 


The Man with the Metal Face 87 

He paused, looking around his spacious and severe 
office. 

“It may be that my mother had something to do with 
it.” He spoke almost timidly. “She has been a remark¬ 
able woman. Some day-” 

“Some day—you will tell me? When you come for 
a sitting?” 

“You will not consider it a pretty story—you.” 

“It affected your expression?” 

“No doubt. Doesn’t one’s expression grow out of 
experience and training?” 

He looked at her steadily until with a nervous gesture 
she covered the lower part of her face with a whirl of 
her sable stole. 

“I thought you would cover your mouth,” he said, and 
laughed in a cold, merciless way. 

And yet as his eyes turned toward her as she went out 
a few moments later he was wondering why he had 
looked at her so much. She was only a woman. He 
had never looked like that at any woman in all his life. 
The room, with its gathering winter dusk, its cold walls, 
the faint sounds of steamers rumbling in the harbor, 
appeared to be warmer. Perhaps it was a new hunger, 
after all these years, stirring within. He pushed aside 
a pile of his personal selling orders and without calling 
any of his secretaries he wrote on his calendar “Thursday 
at four” and then stared out at the sudden onslaught 
upon the plate glass of swirling moist snow. 

That snow was late. Spring had lingered, and came 
now in treacherous bits interrupted by cold and sleet, as 
if winter retreating was backing away snarling and bit¬ 
ing as it went. When Haslam found her studio building 
and left his limousine with the muffled slam of the door 
below, he noted as he went up in the elevator that on. 


88 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

every luxurious corridor the western windows threw 
abundance of warm sunlight. 

He did not pause to look about at the moist clay figures, 
the casts, the table with its piles of sketches and water 
colors before snatching his hand out of the warmth 
of hers and saying quite abruptly, “I ought to tell you 
the story I promised. It is not a story; it is just—facts.” 

“Yes,” she said, offering him the cigarets. 

“Never smoke,” he said, sitting down and looking up 
at the wide expanse of skylight. 

“My father went away with someone. He left my 
mother.” 

He stopped to smile cynically at the expression on the 
girl’s face. 

“I have no delicacy of narration,” he said. “I am not 
a talker. I merely state the fact. You were interested 
the other day? Yes. Now I tell you. My father went 
away with a rather distinguished woman. What she saw 
in him I do not know. He left our town, and afterward 
I was born.” 

Miss Wheaton arose, went to an almost shapeless head 
of pliable clay covered with sweated drops of water, and 
caressed it as if offering it temptation to become vital. 
Haslam watched her hands and the whiteness of her 
flesh where the sleeves fell back from her bare and quite 
beautiful arms. 

“The truth is that my father and his performance was 
my making.” 

She modeled on and said vaguely, “How?” 

“The effect on my mother,” he replied. “I would not 
be telling you this if I had not mentioned it inadvert¬ 
ently the other day. I don’t know anything about 
prenatal influence, but I know nine-tenths of a man’s or 
woman’s destiny is made before they are seven years. 


The Man with the Metal Face 89 

My mother never learned to hate my father. She will 
die thinking he was trapped. But she hated the woman. 
She hated all women. She had no mercy on women. 
She thought none of them was ever straight or true. 
She even will go to her grave hating herself because she 
is a woman. Naturally enough, I absorbed that hate.” 

Beatrice was not so young that she had not acquired 
poise. The mere struggle to attain the position in her art 
to which she had climbed gave her a full measure of 
mature self-balance, and something also of power over 
others. Her lips parted slowly. 

“I know what you are going to say,” Haslam ex¬ 
claimed. “You are going to say that I do not look at 
you with hate.” 

“Not at all,” she replied. “But now it doesn’t matter 
what I was going to say.” 

“It is possible to love women—in a sense—lightly— 
and to hate them profoundly,” he said. 

“I know.” 

“And you will not forget?” he asked anxiously. 

She shook her head with a smile. She said, “In an¬ 
other moment you will be telling me that you are dan¬ 
gerous to my welfare.” 

He did not laugh; he only replied as if to pursue his 
thought, “I said my father made my success.” 

She smiled again. “Is the key to success, hate of 
women ?” 

“It eliminates a great deal—a great deal of diversion. 
A man can lose himself in only one thing. If he does it 
in a woman he better keep away from Wall Street.” 

“Where, as your eulogist said, you obtain a metal 
face.” 

He refused to recognize the banter and said solemnly, 
“I have concentrated.” 


90 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“On success ?” 

“Yes.” 

She stopped her work now and even wiped one little 
finger with her sculptor’s apron so that she could throw 
back strands of red-gold hair which had strayed forward 
toward her forehead. 

“I wonder how successful you are?” she said as if to 
herself. 

“As successful as my mother ever hoped. She taught 
me how. The best service I could render, she said, was 
for me to be successful. Money does more than any¬ 
thing else. If anyone stood between me and success that 
person ought to be stepped over, around or on.” 

“By hook—or crook,” Beatrice suggested. 

“I’ve never had to play any other way than square.” 

“Merciless, however?” she suggested. 

There was no answer. 

She nodded and went to work once more, paring great 
slices .and breaking great lumps of the plastic material 
away. They fell with dull thumps into the pail at her 
feet, and then the purr of the catlike city rose up from 
the streets and from the open spaces of the park with 
its bare trees, and entered the studio with the false warm 
luxury of the spring air. Now and then she stopped to 
look at Haslam, who, with a scowl, turned the pages of 
an architectural journal. 

“Where do you live?” she asked at last. 

“Alone,” he said. “My apartment—Becker—my man. 
Two telephones. Private wire to Chicago. A refriger¬ 
ator that makes its own artificial ice. Get the picture?”. 

“Your den?” she inquired in a tone which he believed 
was mocking. 

His face lit up with a smile not wholly pleasing. “Yes, 
you are thinking it is a kind of wolf’s den. It would 


The Man with the Metal Face 91 

please my mother to hear that. She learned to believe that 
we are all wolves—especially women. I’m not a hypo¬ 
crite; I, too, am a wolf.” 

“I have known wolves before,” she said in a voice 
almost caressing. 

“Especially one,” he said, insinuating his speculations. 
“Probably sometime ago he did not give you warning. 
I do .” 

She showed her utter surprise and he laughed. “It 
was that look around your mouth,” he said. “Women 
only get that from some single—disillusionment.” 

“I have not been disillusioned,” she said quietly. There 
was a warm, tender quality in her voice he had not heard 
before. “When I am disillusioned I shall be quite ready 
to die.” 

He looked about at the examples of her work. 

“No,” said he at last, going back into the architectural 
magazine. “I do not think you have been disillusioned. 
You could not make these plaster girls so full of joy, 
these bronze men so full of eagerness for living. But 
I do not speak with authority on that. I know the mar¬ 
ket. I know the Street. I know the wolf and all his 
tricks. That’s really about all I know.” 

“I wonder whether you know yourself, M. Haslam,” 
she said. 

He arose, yawned and stared at her. His face, its long 
nose, its high brow, its cold eyes, its firm mouth—all were 
like metal. 

“An appointment,” he said. “Enough to-day. Day 
after to-morrow, eh?” He took his hat in his brisk 
manner and with the rapid motions of his well-preserved, 
lean, strong body, his quick legs, his active arms. 

“You are no wolf,” she said. “A wolf does not live 
on fear.” 


92 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“You think I live on fear?” 

“Perhaps.” 

He went out without replying, just as if it were noth¬ 
ing of consequence to deny or to affirm. 

The next sitting brought no reference to the conversa¬ 
tion of the first. He only said when he came in, “One 
has to look at you several times to be sure you’re beau¬ 
tiful.” 

Beatrice may have considered that it was impolitic to 
reply to this. She made no answer as she took the wet 
cloth from the head of clay. 

“So you’ve been working!” he exclaimed. “While I 
was not here. What a memory! It looks a lot like me 
now!” 

He saw staring back into his own face the roughly 
modeled face of a man of iron will, somewhat cruel, 
with craft and cunning around the eyes, and a firm, 
inflexible, silent mouth. 

“Ha!” he said. “You have eyes, Beatrice Wheaton, 
eyes!” 

He came near, holding out his hand. When she took 
it he turned her fingers over, examined the fair pink 
skin and put his other palm over them. 

“Well?” he said. 

“I understand,” she replied. 

“You are not in love with anyone?” he asked. 

“No,” she said. “What an amazing man you are! So 
sure of yourself.” 

“Of myself—yes. Of any other—no.” 

She did not pull her hand away. 

“I am direct,” he said. “I tell you that there are two 
relations a sensible man can have toward a woman. One 
is that she is a piece of property. He parades her as a 


The Man with the Metal Face 93 

possession. She is his. He hangs jewels on her. The 
other is that she is a thrilling amusement. He takes her 
in his arms. He is tender. He is kind. He grows tired. 
The first is a bad investment for a man; the second a 
bad one for a woman .’ 9 

“And that is all?” 

“Absolutely. My mother says-” 

The expression of complete impatience and intolerance 
which passed across her face as he mentioned his mother 
appeared to excite him. 

“What do you care what my mother taught me to be¬ 
lieve!” he exclaimed. “What’s that to you? Why do 
you resent it? What interest have you in me? I’m a 
wolf—a man with a metal face.” 

“M. Haslam,” she said in a voice which lacked all 
sureness, all poise. “M. Haslam”—as if some magic 
was in that name. 

He leaned nearer to her. He said, “You didn’t take 
your hand away. I’m not an oracle. But I know we all 
have our hungers. Sometimes I feel things like that, 
just the way I feel the market—just the way I feel the 
result of a big industrial deal. You have your hungers. 
You can pretend to be a masterful young woman with 
standing, income, independence. Nevertheless, for ten¬ 
derness you would give a great deal.” She was silent. 

“It would be the same if someone else—not me—came 
and held your hands warmly between his own.” 

She shook her head and said, “That is something of a 
cruelty.” 

“To you?” he asked. 

“No,” she said. “For the moment I was thinking that 
it was not fair to you.” 

He left her then and walked about, thinking. Some- 



94 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

thing in his perplexed scowl caused her to go to the 
clay and touch the plastic forehead boldly with her 
two thumbs, pressing hastily and nervously a new 
contour. 

“I am not lacking in a certain kind of tenderness,” he 
said at last. 

She did not answer. 

“Do you ever take flyers in Wall Street?” he inquired 
suddenly. “If you wish to do so I could-” 

She interrupted sharply then, but in a low voice. “Why 
should I take the thing you call flyers in Wall Street?” 
she asked. “I have no particular use for money. I think 
I have more than I deserve already, and certainly more 
than I want.” 

“For God’s sake!” he exclaimed spontaneously. “What 
do you work for, then?” 

“To make your likeness tell the truth.” 

“To the world? Or me?” he asked as if expecting an 
answer. 

The sun’s rays were coming in then in a shaft of light 
which fell full upon her head. He stood looking in 
admiration at the brilliance with which her rich coils 
of hair caught this light and with startled wonder at the 
drops of emotion upon her cheeks. 

“Perhaps,” he said under his breath, with the sugges¬ 
tion of one who feels he has awakened sentiment, and 
having said this to himself he sat up more proudly like 
a great king and with an implacable look upon his face. 

“When I was eight I was taught the lives of great, 
stern men,” he said. “Painstakingly taught. That was 
when softness and weakness were taken out of me, I can 
tell you.” 

“Were they?” she said absent-mindedly. 

“Certainly,” he replied. “Certainly.” 



The Man with the Metal Face 95 

For the rest of the time he remained thinking, staring 
far away, as when at his desk he often planned his moves 
on the exchange and in the industrial world. Occa¬ 
sionally he could see her at her work, a figure of whole¬ 
some well-being, the activity of health, the golden glow 
that came from her as if a gentle light in her were shed¬ 
ding its rays upon the outer world. 

At the moment of his going he was quite frank. He 
said, “I would like to take you in my arms.” 

She shook her head, denying him that privilege. 

“I wonder whether I am letting too much of life slip 
by,” he asked, just as if he held a deciding vote on a 
board of directors, and he wiped his perplexed forehead 
with his palm. 

“Of course,” she said. “But it would hardly do to be 
so precipitate.” 

“Why not?” he replied. “I’m a lonely man, I con¬ 
fess it.” 

“Do you think of me?” 

“When I say I want to take you in my arms? Cer¬ 
tainly. You are a lonely woman, after all.” 

Something in these words appeared to wilt her. There 
was a finality in this pronouncement. Haslam had a 
pleasant voice—pleasant and decisive. Like his face, his 
voice could be metallic, but it was not always so. Now 
it was sympathetic and warm, but like the voice of a wise 
judge pronouncing reluctantly a filial sentence. She 
might have gone on believing that she was not a lonely 
woman if Haslam had not spoken so clearly and with 
such an obvious declaration of truth as one who says, 
“It is a pleasant day.” 

“I do not know what to make of you,” she replied in 
a voice neither firm nor much above a whisper. 

He looked at her with painstaking care—her figure, her 


96 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

face, her hands. Once he smiled. He saw her lean 
back against the shelf of plaster casts rather wearily and 
move her bare elbows on the rough surface of the wood 
as if pain gave her pleasure. 

“Well, that’s all,” he said brusquely. “That’s the fact. 
Some day when you feel like doing it you will come and 
put your arms about me. You hear what I say? There’s 
no conceit in that. I am not conceited about that kind 
of thing, Beatrice. It is because we are the particular 
beings we happen to be. I will never speak of it again. 
Good-by.” 

At the door, turning, he glanced back at the clay bust 
in the center of the studio. 

“You’ve put a lot of good hard character into that 
face,” he said, praising her. 

“Hard?” 

“Yes, hard!” he said with a click, and shut the door 
softly. 

Perhaps all she could hear ringing in her ears was 
that voice of his, saying without bravado and yet without 
doubt: “You will come and put your arms about me.” 

Perhaps events contributed something to the fulfill¬ 
ment. Haslam jumped out of his limousine, a week 
later. There was an uneven broken surface on the curb¬ 
stone; a skidding truck had cracked out a piece of the 
granite on a slippery day in winter. The nick was suffi¬ 
cient to turn his foot; he could hear the bone in his foot 
yield as one can hear the breaking of a pipestem. 

“And now you can have me as a helpless subject,” he 
wrote her from the private hospital. “Four days have 
gone, but Fll be here many more. You have always com¬ 
plained that I was restless in your studio. Here you can 
catch me half strapped into an armchair, detesting the 
odors of ether drifting down the corridors and every- 


The Man with the Metal Face 97 

thing and everybody, but completely a captive—a one 
hundred per cent sitter.” 

She moved her model into the sitting room of his hos¬ 
pital suite, and nurses and young doctors peeked in and 
whispered. 

“It’s a wonderful north light,” she said. 

“They said you sent in those flowers,” he said, pointing. 
“Did you?” 

“Yes.” 

“You shouldn’t have done it.” 

“Why?” 

His answer surprised her as much as anything he had 
ever said. He replied, “Because I don’t like to have that 
kind of thing done for me.” 

“I do not see why it is very important one way or the 
other,” she said. “I really was not very sorry for you. 
Certainly not on account of your broken bones.” 

Haslam looked up quickly, detecting something in her 
meaning not completely obvious from her words. After 
that he drew back into that peculiar silence which had 
walled and masked him in the last sessions in the studio 
which had followed his second visit there. 

The window of the room looked out over a comer 
lot held for speculative purposes, where the shouts of 
boys in spring baseball games were a daily menace to 
the peace of the hospital. Now the April rain was fall¬ 
ing softly. The patches of grass sprang into vivid green 
and the diamond, worn by running feet, was marked out 
in pretty brown. It held his gaze as he meditated and 
she worked in a feverish mood of creativeness. 

“My stars!” he exclaimed at the end. “It’s dark!” 

She came back from the washbasin with hands clean 
and pink from cold water and hard rubbing with the 
towel, but she fell into a chair, a little limp. 


98 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“You’ve worked too hard,” he said. “You look 
weary.” 

“And lonely?” she replied. “I suppose you’re going to 
say I look lonely?” 

“I wasn’t. But you do. Yes, you do. That’s a fact. 
Sitting there in that rocking-chair with your hands folded 
and something in your face. You look as if all your 
success and all that goes with it hadn’t given you what 
you seek.” 

“It doesn’t give that to anyone,” she said. “Does it?” 

The building was very quiet. They could hear some 
distant elevator pass the floor with the click of its safety 
latch resounding down the hard white corridors. 

Haslam was still staring at her as if her query had 
drained away some vitality and left him empty and cold. 

“You should get used to it, Em,” she said with a 
nervous laugh. 

She had felt the hand of Destiny upon her fine shoul¬ 
ders, and now having spoken she sighed as with resigna¬ 
tion, got up and came to his chair, where he was leaning 
back among the pillows. 

“You were right,” she went on. “You were right. 
It is absurd to believe it.” And with this vague expres¬ 
sion she put her arms about him tenderly and allowed 
him to take her head in the curve of his palm and bend 
it softly down until her cheek was sharing the warmth 
of his. Afterward she often thought how much this 
caress was like that of a brother and sister rather than 
one expressing the mood of lovers. 

“I did not know then that your kisses would ever be 
any different,” she said some days after he had begun to 
go to his offices in the great downtown. 

“A brother on crutches would hardly ever be devoted 
enough to come every afternoon, even when the occasion 


The Man with the Metal Face 99 

was a sitting for a portrait/’ he replied. “I think we can 
never hope to return to any brother-and-sister relation¬ 
ship. It is rather too late.” 

Beatrice stared at him with a little flickering of fear 
on her face. 

“In any case it is unwise to look ahead,” he went on. 

“Yes, unwise.” 

He nodded. “We are lucky—at least I am lucky to 
have this period.” 

“Period?” 

“Yes, period; everything is a period. All that I ask of 
you, Beatrice, is to face all truth about me. Look at that 
face of mine as it has developed under your fingers. All 
I ask is that you should count upon my being exactly 
the man you have portrayed. You have shown me the 
real fact of my appearance. A mirror will never do it. 
You have flattered me, but I see only stern single purpose 
in that face—the face of metal. I see all that I am and 
a little something of what I would like to be. On the 
whole I do not think any woman could hope to play 
much of a part in the life of a man whose face is like 
that.” 

“I understand,” she said. “Come here and put your 
arms around me. I am cold.” 

He laughed as he released her. 

“Lets call it a day,” he said, using a characteristic 
phrase. “The thing is almost done. Knock off work 
and come for a ride in the country—the park, the Bronx, 
the Heights, and out into the great outdoors of West¬ 
chester as they call it in the real-estate folders.” 

“And find an inn?” 

“Yes, and find an inn—or a farmhouse where they’ll 
fry a chicken for us.” 

“Wait till I get a wrap behind this screen.” 


ioo Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

He paced up and down, his hands clasped behind his 
back, a little like Napoleon on the Bellerophon. 

“Funny how farmhouses always strive to make food 
like an inn, and inns always boast of home cooking as 
good as farmhouses,” she said from behind the wall of 
her improvised dressing room. 

He laughed and picked up her fur stole, burying his 
nose in it, seeking for that particular aroma which was 
hers. 

“Hurry!” he said suddenly. “Let’s get away. This 
bust of me is giving me a stony stare. I can’t get a smile 
out of it. It looks like my boss.” 

“Perhaps it will be,” she replied. “Perhaps it will.” 

“Don’t rush out,” he said, holding out his arms. 
“Come here. You’re nice—you’re the nicest thing in a 
very rotten world.” 

Always it was like that; always an indefinable ming¬ 
ling of joy and sadness; always the strange similarity to 
lovers who are condemned to die and have only a little 
span in which to live and love. 

The end was quite inevitable. It came when at last 
Beatrice sat across the table from Haslam at Goriot’s, 
where the ceiling lights are only tiny imitation stars and 
the electric candles on the tables shed warm rays upon the 
living beauty of a woman’s sentient hands. 

Haslam thought that Beatrice’s fingers trembled as 
they moved slightly the silver and porcelain before her. 

“Well?” he asked, and bending a little lower looked up 
into her face. He usually knew now when she had some¬ 
thing to say to him; often he surprised her by asking 
before her thought had taken full shape. 

“Em,” she said. 

“Yes.” 


The Man with the Metal Face ioi 

“I haven’t said this to you. I was waiting. But now 
there is nothing for me to do.” 

“Go on.” 

“The portrait of you is done. It can go to-morrow 
to be cast.” 

“In bronze?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, what of that? It had to be done sometime.” 

“I have failed with it. I cannot do what I desired.” 

He chuckled. “It’s far better than I ever hoped any 
sculptor could show anybody. Show, did I say? Ex¬ 
pose, I’d better say. And it’s the real interpretation of 
me. That’s the wonder of it.” 

She shook her head. She said, “No, Em.” 

“Well, it’s done,” he asserted. “I was not sure. I 
knew it would be done sometime. I suspected it was 
about over.” 

The word “over” made her clasp her hands suddenly 
in a tense grip of her fingers one upon the other. 

“To-morrow—to-morrow is Saturday. I’ll send the 
clay over to Bonelli, who does my castings. And then in 
the afternoon I’d like to play.” 

He hesitated a moment before saying, “You ought to 
play. But now the weather’s warm, why don’t you get 
out of the city? I wish I could. Why don’t you go to 
some place by the sea? Didn’t somebody tell me you had 
a bungalow and studio or Italian villa or something at 
Pipe Harbor?” 

He could hear her breath quicken, and avoided looking 
into her staring eyes. 

“No,” said he. “If you mean that I could go with 
you—of course I cannot.” 

She had known all the time that he had intended an 


102 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

end, and she had guessed that he had fixed its date. For 
this was just what he would do; it was just what a man 
whose face was like the one she had modeled would do. 

He had told her what he would do. He had warned 
her. He knew, as she knew, that she was only a fool to 
turn white like this with pain and shock. 

'‘The cruel thing would be to go on,” he said, closing 
his lips into a thin line. 

He was right about that too. 

"Cruel to you,” he added. 

She nodded. 

"Will you take me to the studio now?” she said. 
"There is a moon. We can throw open all the windows.” 

"No,” he said firmly. "I will take you to the door and 
say good night, Beatrice.” 

"After all,” she said at last, "it will be a great wound. 
It is my own fault.” 

"We have a right to our own lives,” he said. "I have 
to go on with mine. Even the diversion of this spring 
has cut down my pungency. There’s one thing for me— 
one love. It is the Street, the dear old Street.” 

He smiled, satisfied, and added jocosely, "Where they 
call me the man with the metal face.” 

"So to-night-” she began. 

"Ye9, if anything is to be done—do it!” 

She drew back a little, as one who has received a 
frontal blow. 

"I understand,” she replied at last. "You have been 
quite fair—quite consistent and—yes—generous, Em.” 

"For heaven’s sake don’t tell me what’s in your heart!” 
he exclaimed with fervor. "Don’t let’s go into that.” 

"No.” 

"Favor to me. Thank you. And can I do one for you, 
Beatrice ?” 



The Man with the Metal Face 103 

She did not answer. 

“I said-” 

“I heard you,” she replied softly. “I was thinking of 
what you said. A favor? Yes.” 

“What?” 

“Well, when do you intend sending this portrait in 
bronze to your mother? Is there any hurry?” 

“No. No hurry. Why?” 

“The favor I was going to ask you is a queer one. 
All I ask is that you keep the bronze, when it comes to 
you, for a month. Put it on your mantel in your library. 
On the desk. Or that Sheraton table in your bedroom 
beneath the blue silk curtains. You’ve told me about 
your possessions. You would never take me there. That 
is your characteristic caution. But take my portrait 
there.” 

“Bless mv stars!” 

“Well, will you?” 

“It’s mad! What a strange girl you were.” 

She winced but managed to say, “Will you?” 

“Certainly.” 

“Promise? For thirty days?” 

“I promise.” 

She put her cold nervous fingers over his calm hands. 

“Oh, Em,” she said, “I wonder if you will ever know 
how much better I knew you than you knew yourself!” 

She, too, had now spoken in the past tense. 

Haslam reflected afterward that it was an extraordi¬ 
nary promise he had made to her. He laughed as he 
thought of the conversation he had overheard on the last 
day he had been in the hospital. One of the young doc¬ 
tor^ an interne, and a young nurse with the clear blue 
of childhood still in her eyes had come into his sitting 
room, not knowing that he was there. It had been after 



104 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

dusk had fallen and the doctor had lit a match and held 
it up before the clay face of the bust. 

Again he could see the young woman slip her hand 
into the doctor’s and again hear her voice saying, “It is 
certainly art. But you ought to be glad, Doc, that you 
do not look like that.” 

The young doctor had said, “It isn’t weak”; and she 
had answered, “No, strong—horribly!” 

The sculptress now had exacted a promise from him 
to keep the cast close to him—to live with it. She would 
show him the truth about himself. Well, that was ab¬ 
surd, because the truth about himself was pleasing to 
him. He laughed and told his valet to unpack the bust 
and put it anywhere he liked. 

This had been done when Haslam returned from the 
theater that same evening. He did not see it at first. He 
threw his overcoat over a chair back, drank a full glass 
of water, poured out of the silver bottle, and then turned 
toward the fireplace as one does who, through a winter, 
finds comfort in coming home to find embers still glow¬ 
ing sleepily on the hearth. 

Now, however, the warm weather had come. The 
hearth was quite black and swept clean. Indeed the win¬ 
dow was open, so that the China-silk curtains danced 
about like ghosts. Far away the intermittent flares of a 
blast furnace yellowed and reddened the purple black of 
the city night. But a hush had come over the metropolis; 
Haslam could hear his watch ticking in his own pocket. 
He raised his eyes. 

“Hello!” he said. \ 

There it was above the hearth! The Italian mantel of 
carved marble held up the dark bronze, and the wall be¬ 
hind with its chill tint of French gray gave its outline 
emphasis. 


The Man with the Metal Face 105 

Haslam was somewhat astonished that hard bronze 
could appear quite as flexible and living as it now did. 
For a moment he stared back into the immobile eyes of 
the portrait, filled with a strange sense that he, too, was 
a thing of metal, that they were alike, and two bronze 
faces looking into each other’s cold mysteries. He smiled 
as he went nearer and tweaked the hard smooth nose 
with his thumb and one long finger in a familiar gesture 
of disrespect. 

“Good,” he said. “She had skill!” 

He wondered where she was now and whether she 
had left the city. But that was a closed book, as he 
phrased it. He would be a fool to peep into its pages 
again. She would suffer for a while. That was not 
his fault. She could have read his face. She did read it. 
Here it was—the proof in accurate bronze. Further¬ 
more, he had put her on notice. She had said to him 
that he had been completely fair. So he had been! The 
book had been closed in cold blood. Where she was now 
was no longer any business of his. He had been gen¬ 
erous to take this stand. Continuing the dream life of 
their play, as he called it, would not have hurt him; it 
could have cut deeper scars into her. 

He looked into the strong unyielding countenance of 
the bronze with increasing satisfaction. It would please 
his mother. No sentiment. Here was decision, oneness 
of purpose. If saints are ever to be made from extreme 
devotees of practical, gainful, resolute, uncompromising, 
ruthless determination, here was the face of a saint. 
Some day there would be the canonization of some Saint 
of the Street, some Saint of Big Business or of the Ex¬ 
change. And the statue of the saint would have a face 
like this! 

Haslam laughed. 


106 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

As he laughed he thought he saw the face of bronze 
relax a little, as if it, too, would laugh. The room was 
silent, as if the progress of time had ceased a moment; 
there was a hush, as if a hush had come just before this 
lifeless bust broke into raucous laughter. But there was 
no sound, no laugh, not even a full smile. It might 
have been the way the light fell. Haslam’s impression 
was only that the bronze lips had relaxed a little, that 
for a moment the eyes of the thing had become filled with 
a moment of tenderness. He felt as if for a moment 
he had been looking into the face of someone who had 
for him a little amusement and a little pity, a little tender¬ 
ness and a little contempt. 

He looked at his watch and yawned. No one knew as 
he knew how regularly he ate, how regularly he went to 
bed, how regularly he did everything. He gave the im¬ 
pression of a driving force which would smash all regu¬ 
larity into bits. But now it was half past twelve and he 
always went to bed at twelve. He had been standing 
there looking into this metal face of his, quite uncon¬ 
scious of the passage of time. The yawn came to a sud¬ 
den end as he felt the surprise of his forgetfulness. 

The next day he looked at the bust in the full sunlight. 
Then it was that he became convinced that Beatrice had 
changed something in it since he had seen the model. 
The difference between the clay and the bronze could 
not account for this change. On the first glance the 
thing was exactly as it had been. There were the fea¬ 
tures, unchanged. They were not lacking in whatever 
regular handsome modeling he could find in his own face. 
They still expressed in cold hard metal the character 
which they had expressed when the young doctor and the 
young nurse had passed upon them. The head, bent for¬ 
ward a little aggressively, was the same head of a lean 


The Man with the Metal Face 107 

powerful creature of prey. Something of the hawk and 
the wolf was still there as always. He nodded with as¬ 
surance. 

A moment later he returned to look at the thing again. 
He stood with his hat in his hand ready to go out, and 
as he stood his own face filled with doubt and per¬ 
plexity. Somehow the obvious first glance at this bronze 
face did not disclose all. After one looked, some trick 
of light and shadow or of expression softened every¬ 
thing. As if the bronze were translucent, one could im¬ 
agine that under its surface there was half hidden a bet¬ 
ter portrait of the man. The imagination perhaps 
brought strange tender smiles to the corners of the mouth 
and the corners of the otherwise stern relentless eyes. 
Flickers of warmth ran beneath the adamantine surface. 
It was as if the sculptress had done one likeness and 
then covered it with a thin veneer of some other likeness. 

“I’m not so sure,” said Haslam to his valet, who held 
overcoat, stick and gloves. “What do you think of it, 
Becker ?” 

“I couldn’t say, sir. It’s very good, sir, of you, and 
yet it looks one way sometimes and one way at other 
times. Quite odd, sir! I was examining of it all day 
yesterday after unpacking, sir. It’s like an actor, sir—I 
mean to say—who has put on a—I mean to say—a part, 
or expression, sir.” 

Haslam felt some impatience about that bronze. He 
would have liked to pack it up and send it on to his 
mother. He had promised to keep it a month, and by 
Haslam even a broker’s nod was rigidly interpreted as 
a grim promise. Men big enough and strong enough 
could afford to treat honor as a luxury worth having. 
This was his way of expressing it, and he liked the cyn¬ 
ical note in his expression of something virtuous which 


108 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

might, in fact, have been his natural instinct to main¬ 
tain. 

Nothing much had ever puzzled Haslam. The puzzle 
of this bronze face troubled him increasingly. Sometimes 
he imagined its thin lips were about to part and tell him 
something of vital importance. They never spoke. They 
never would, and it appeared nonsensical for them to 
appear always ready to disclose, when they never would. 
Sometimes he could see curious appearances of tenderness 
in the features. It was as if there were two modeled 
countenances in this one piece of metal. 

Once, late at night, after staring into the face of metal 
during a moment when it expressed in subtle vagueness a 
whole set of qualities he had always boasted were not 
his, he walked quickly into his bathroom, turned on the 
light above the shaving mirror and stared into the re¬ 
flection of his own flesh and blood, half perplexed, half 
eager. 

"No,” said he, “there’s nothing in my face like that. 
Not a thing. It was an accident. She knew me pretty 
well. It’s just an accident of the material.” 

He wondered what she had done to forget their days 
together. She had raised no trouble, no scene. She took 
everything so patiently. Perhaps she had suffered. That 
was too bad. Could not be helped. And yet it was too 
bad. He half closed his eyes. Just then as he 
straightened up he thought suddenly he had seen the ex¬ 
pression of the bronze face in the mirror. It was a curious 
fleeting look. But there was now only the reflection of 
Haslam’s own countenance—the one he had known 
always. 

In that time he had one of his great victories. For two 
years there had been a duel in the Street between Haslam 
and Bascom, the operator in the market for two large 


The Man with the Metal Face 109 

bank presidents who were playing rogue elephant as 
speculators. Haslam had considerable contempt for bank 
presidents who played the market apart from the ring 
of their own directors. As for Bascom, the feud was 
an old one. Bascom had reneged a promise once', and 
Haslam had nearly had his creditors come down on him 
as a result of Bascom. He had told Bascom that he 
would break him some day. The day had come. Partly 
by accident it had come. It just happened that Haslam 
had a client who held two hundred thousand in Bas- 
com’s paper and had discounted it into Haslam’s hands 
three days before Bascom was caught in a bear move¬ 
ment on steel. Haslam knew what to do now—the 
thumbscrews. 

“Curious thing,” said Haslam’s chief bookkeeper. 
“They live right near us in Montclair. His wife was a 
flighty person for years, but the moment she found out 
a baby was coming-” 

“Late in life,” said Haslam. 

“Well, it will outbalance any of the pain of this fail¬ 
ure,” Johnson asserted. “The two of them are like nuts 
about the youngster. I hope this won’t be a shock to 
her.” 

There was a pause. 

The bookkeeper suddenly said, “What’s the matter, 
Mr. Haslam? You look so funny.” 

“Me? I look funny?” The head of the house had 
jumped to his feet. “How the devil do you mean?” 

“Why, just your expression. I wondered if you’d 
changed your mind about closing Bascom out. That’s all,, 
sir.” 

Haslam sat down. 

“Yes, I had,” he said wearily. “I’m a fool to do it.. 
I’m going to let Bascom pull through.” 



iio Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

He walked over to the tape, whistling softly. “I can’t 
imagine my doing this,” he said. “Perhaps we don’t 
know ourselves, after all.” 

“Well, it’s all right with me,” Johnson replied. “But 
that’s what I said. I thought I could tell by your face.” 

That night when Haslam went home he found his 
valet, Becker, moving about the study as if to create the 
impression of being occupied by eternal labors of 
service. 

“Look here, Becker,” he said. “What about that 
bust? I had it made for my mother. Do you think it 
will do?” 

The old man pressed hi9 lips. He said: “Well, speak¬ 
ing very frank, sir, I thought it did you a favor, sir. 
When I first saw it I thought it had a little the better 
of you, sir. But the last week or so, sir, I’m better im¬ 
pressed, sir. Somehow its face has changed, sir.” 

“Or mine?” 

“Your face changed, sir?” 

“It might.” 

“Yes, it might. Sometimes sorrow changes faces, sir. 
Sometimes it’s being lonely and deserted, sir. I don’t 
believe you’ve had these crosses to bear—ever.” 

Haslam replied, “Perhaps not. Perhaps I’ve got ’em 
coming to me. Perhaps I’ve had ’em and didn’t know it. 
Perhaps I’ve had a lot of things I didn’t know I’ve had.” 

He stood smiling rather affectionately at old Becker 
until the latter in complete astonishment blurted out: 
“There, sir! If you could see yourself now, sir! Mr. 
Haslam, may I drop down dead at your feet if you’re not 
the living image right now of that thing on the mantel!” 

Pipe Harbor is just inside a point covered with scrub 
pines. At the end are treacherous rocks under the swash 


The Man with the Metal Face hi 

of low tide, but they were known by the chart and 
reckoned with by the skipper as he pulled the nose of 
Haslam’s lean white trout-shaped steam yacht into the 
cove. The tender came down over the stern with a 
rattle of blocks and tackle, echoing against the rock and 
pine walls of shore, and the snick-snock of oarlocks 
sounded as the master was being rowed under the full 
sunlight across the waters whipped into shimmering silver 
by the brisk summer morning’s wind. 

Where the point curves into the main shore fields of 
grasses, still filled with white splashes of daisy blossoms, 
rose from the yeliow beach toward the crouching group 
of little weathered buildings at the top of the knoll. Two 
old trees, which from a distance appear like elms, lean 
toward each other over the bungalow and the studio 
like two old friends. The landing place is a little 
shaky pier where a red dory rides fretfully on its 
painter. 

Haslam walked up the narrow winding path through 
the perfumed fields, and when almost at the top he 
stopped and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. 
So he was standing hatless when she came out the door 
of the studio. 

He waved to her. 

“Come on down here,” he called. 

A moment of hesitation ended by Beatrice moving for¬ 
ward quite naturally, as if she had expected him for 
many days, but the first words she said dispelled that 
illusion. 

She said in a trembling voice: “I never expected I 
should ever see you again, Em. I had gone back to my 
work—my work alone.” 

“I guess there are other things,” he said, holding out 
his hand. 


1 12 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Yes,” she said. “Is that your own boat?” She 
pointed toward the sea. 

He nodded. 

“Let’s* sit down here.” 

He was trying to think of words to tell her why he had 
come back. He drew her closer, so that, sitting, leaning 
on their palms pressed upon the cool foliage of the 
clover, they could look as with a single viewpoint, above 
the tops of high nodding grasses, over the wide stretches 
of descending fields, flat expanse of sea and the climbing 
blue sky. 

Suddenly frightened, she exclaimed in horror, “You 
didn’t come back because you were thinking of me?” 

“No,” he said. “I’m glad you spoke of that. I came 
back because of me.” 

“Then you can stay forever if you want to,” she said, 
turning her lips toward his. 

“Of course,” said Haslam. “Of course. That’s what 
I wanted to say to you.” He laughed. “I want to sit 
for you forever. I want you to make me a new face.” 


THE GORILLA 


“Not a woman within a hundred and fifty miles,” 
said Steinmetz, the banker. 

We were sitting on a pile of iron trusses three thou¬ 
sand feet above sea-level in the Gorgon Pass. Steinmetz 
had underwritten half of the bonds of the irrigation 
project, and he was out there to take first-hand informa¬ 
tion back to the other members of the syndicate. 

Behind us was the shadowed, echoing cathedral hall 
of the giant firs; before us the chasm of the Pass yawned, 
its cragged top open like the toothed jaws of an up¬ 
turned mouth, its bottom holding the white foaming 
thread of the river. The stream, at the site of the irriga¬ 
tion dam, had been picked up in a wooden sluice. On the 
far side a gigantic wall of white concrete reflected the 
sunlight, and along its top the black-steel cranes were 
busy dumping the syrup of stone into new forms. An 
army of inconsequent black specks around the switching- 
engines, steam-drills, and rock-crushers shifted its posi¬ 
tion constantly—spreading, retracting, and regrouping 
like bacilli on a microscopic slide. We knew the specks 
were men. 

When the power-house shack gave forth a long puff 
of snow-white steam, and ten seconds later the shriek of 
the whistle followed, we saw the bacilli coming up the 
trail. The day was over; the wops, the Bohunks, and the 
greasers were returning to their barracks; they would 
pass us on the way. 

“That is not our machine,” said Steinmetz, his city- 


114 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

fed, soft-muscled body still sweating from our climb. 
He had heard the puffing of a motor-car coming up the 
slope. “No,” said he, with his eternally worried banker- 
face. “A stranger.” 

A man who had driven the car came walking through 
the pillared, needle-carpeted grove. He had distinction, 
but not of manners, for he stood near us for several 
minutes gazing down at the job without so much as 
looking at us. Nor was he of agreeable appearance; for, 
though his clothes were of the best, his body was grace¬ 
less, and the strength of character in his face was tragic 
with the suggestion of power gained at the sacrifice of 
soul. 

Without a word of greeting he came to watch the 
panting laborers, yellow and black with sweat and com¬ 
bustion, file by along the trail with shuffling feet and 
tinkle of empty dinner-pails; and as each Italian, Slav, 
Hungarian, or Lett passed, the stranger gazed into the 
man's face as one who seeks to recognize a lost brother. 

“It would surprise us to see Christ walking among 
them,” said he to Steinmetz, sharply. 

“No doubt,” the banker replied, with the surprise and 
alarm of the conventional thinker. “These fellows are 
the scum of Europe.” 

The stranger pulled back his cuffs and looked first at 
one wrist, then at the other. His face, we could see, was 
cold and hard like an iron mask—the face developed by 
a youth who at twenty-one has set his eyes on the pot of 
American gold beneath the painted rainbow and ridden 
at it a lifetime, half blind, and digging spurs into the 
spirit; only his gray eyes showing human fire burning. 

“I now regard the immigrant with terror,” said he, 
gazing steadily at the long-slanted rays on the snowy 
head of Third Peak. “The German farmer and wife 


The Gorilla 115 

passing the Statue of Liberty are just people coming to 
America. These specimens walking before us are the real 
immigrants, sir. It’s the male migrating alone from 
nowhere and in full litters. It has fearful hope in its 
eyes. It has marched in armies without hate, it has 
sweated in fields without dreams, and gone over in win¬ 
drows when the plagues swept it down.” 

“Talk about the fall of sparrows!” exclaimed Stein- 
metz, with a shudder. 

“It comes to us”—the stranger was musing—“it comes 
to us half a man. What is your idea of the other half, 
sir—beast or God?” 

The banker spread his mustache back from his thin 
lips with his pale fingers and shrugged his shoulders; then, 
seeing that the stranger was holding a cigar toward him, 
he took it, examined the red-and-gold band, and clipped 
the end with a well-manicured nail. One could see that 
Steinmetz regarded the expensive cigar-brand as a rec¬ 
ommendation of financial standing. 

“I am cutting down on my smoking,” the stranger said, 
rubbing his smooth-shaven, taut, immobile cheeks with 
the palm of his hand. “I went through the flood at Day- 
ton. It was all blackness, wind, rain, fire, water, chaos— 
the Terror. It is a bad thing to see the river silt drying 
on the faces of people who have been caught in second- 
story rooms. I came out here to forget it.” 

He had taken out a gold-mounted fountain-pen and a 
little white card, which he stretched over the rough home- 
spun cloth on his knee, and over and over again he was 
writing on the card, so that we could see by covert 
glances, the name “Evelyn, Evelyn, Evelyn.” Steinmetz 
regarded the man with curiosity and apprehension; he 
gauged the distance between our perch on the iron gird¬ 
ers and the edge of the cliff. He might have feared that 


ii6 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

the stranger would jump up and wrestle with him nearer 
and nearer that rim of death. 

“You were speaking of immigrants/’ said the banker, 
nervously. 

“Yes, I was about to tell you the story given me by a 
woman I know—a very beautiful woman with hair the 
color of that sunlight beyond those peaks/’ 

Said he: 

Perhaps you know the typical iron industry that squats 
on the bank of a river in the Middle West. It is like a 
creature which has come down to drink or wallow in the 
slime. There are black, steel-guyed chimneys throwing 
up green smoke, and a spur-track curling like a tail up 
to the siding where the freight-cars stand with the yard- 
master’s chalk-marks on them. The city is up the river; 
down the river, the flat marshes are half poisoned with 
the vapors of chemicals and oil on the waters, and soot. 
A concrete road runs toward the city, without a tree on 
it, and hundreds of workmen’s cottages of green-gray 
wood take up the space until the one-story grocery and 
clothing stores and saloons come along. And there a 
car-track picks you up. You look back and see swal¬ 
lows diving in the evening air and the flare of red light 
where the night gang has begun a new pouring-off and 
a parade of men like these fellows we have just seen 
comes out of the gate and scatters into side-streets, where 
the mud swacks beneath the shoes. 

It is not a very pretty picture. But to some man it is 
as beautiful as his own flesh and blood, because it was 
all done by him; there is a flavor of terrible prosperity— 
money, money, money! We see the plant and think of 
private cars, Europe, steam-yachts, society, dollar segars, 
new motors. The plant means power and authority for 


The Gorilla 117 

some man—great power, great authority, great pride— 
and we forget that when the man’s shadow no longer 
falls upon the ground, unless he has bequeathed the world 
something in spirit, he is forgotten. 

It is cruel. It is merciless. All his striving has gone 
for a few rides in an eighty horse-power “six” and a 
half-dozen marble columns in front of his show-place in 
the residence section on the Hill! 

The woman had in mind a particular industry exactly 
as I have described it. And she knew the man. She 
called the plant the “Fish-Plate, and Metal Tie Com¬ 
pany,” and the man “John Wolf.” It was the story of 
the development of many successful Americans—such 
gentlemen as we count among our acquaintances. 

She had known Wolf intimately; she could tell of him 
so that you could see him. There were not any curves 
in the man—body or mind. 

He had been born in Indiana. His father idled, and 
now and then put on wall-paper for neighbors, but the 
boy had steam. No one knows why those things happen 
—the difference between father and son. When the 
youngster was in the days when he fell out of apple-trees, 
and had the measles, he was the only boy in that town 
who had begun to sense the American game and plan 
a drive for a big success. School was not business; he 
shook his lessons out as a bulldog shakes a rag—mad to 
toss childhood aside and drive on and drive on! 

He began with a railroad—the old Illinois & Indiana 
Central—in the purchasing department; in five years he 
was its head. He would not take the graft offered by 
the supply-houses in exchange for patronage, he would 
not smoke or drink, and without turning a hair he al¬ 
lowed himself to be promoted into a position which 
belonged by rights to his best friend—who was on his 


n8 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

back with typhoid. Wolf was too shrewd to be dishonest, 
too selfish to indulge himself, too calculating not to see 
that the bigger job was worth more than the better 
friend, on the road he traveled. We Americans drive 
on—harnessed, covered with foam, blinders on our 
bridles—stark, staring mad. So was John Wolf. 

At twenty-eight he was assistant to the receiver; at 
thirty he was selling four transcontinental roads the Barr 
Truck; at thirty-five he was vice-president of the Western 
Supply Agency; at thirty-nine he was manufacturing 
fish-plates in the back yard of the American Tube, Der¬ 
rick, and Boiler shops in Chicago; at forty-two he had 
twice increased the capital of his own plant—the one on 
the bank of the river; four years later he had the third 
largest railroad-specialty plant in the country. Six 
months ago he went to the home of the biggest man¬ 
ganese-steel producer in Pennsylvania, and, standing 
with his back to the Barbazon pictures in the man’s art- 
gallery, he told him that he must give him a rebate or 
suffer the presence of a new competitor in the Alleghany 
field. The man turned white! 

Wolf had been too busy to marry—too mad, too wild 
for commercial power, until he saw his first half-century 
coming on him. He had one passion—business; it had 
consumed him. 

When he was forty-three he met the woman. She was 
only a girl, just graduated from a co-educational institu¬ 
tion. She had come from New England stock which had 
immigrated to Minnesota. Her hair was gold, her skin 
was old ivory, browned with the sun, and on her cheeks 
the color showed through, and the inner curve of her 
elbow was marked delicately with blue veins. 

She was interested, in her girlish way, in woman suf¬ 
frage and economics, but Wolf liked her at first for her 


The Gorilla 119 

laugh, her activity, her health. He was thrilled by her 
grace. She represented to him youth, joy, the promise 
of life—all the things he had cast away and now wanted 
to bring back. He even laughed tolerantly at her ten¬ 
derness of heart and her interest in human things. These, 
too, he had thrown from him so he could travel without 
their weight; but now, though he believed them to be 
baggage carried by the weak and unsuccessful, when she 
brought them before him he saw them as pretty play¬ 
things. He wanted her as he had wanted his commercial 
success. 

His wealth, power, dominant personality, swept the 
girl and her humble family off their feet. She married 
him, and he built a great house on the bluff overlooking 
the river, with gardens which had to be watered by an 
electric pumping-plant, and underground tunnels to the 
servant quarters and the garage—a three-hundred-thou- 
sand-dollar place. Brandt of Rochester was the archi¬ 
tect. 

He dragged her through Europe in a touring-car while 
the house was being built, spent money in wads, and won¬ 
dered why she did not seem happy. He did not know 
himself that he sought youth. She had sold him hers, 
and he had taken it. Blind as a poor sick bat he brought 
her back, showed her once around the Works, showed 
her buildings, machinery, his office with blue-prints hang¬ 
ing on Circassian-walnut paneling. He took her into 
the shops where eight hundred men were sweating, 
among the pots of hot, swaying liquid metal, among the 
rumbling rollers and shrieking lathes. 

She drew her soft white skirts close about her thin, 
small ankles, and the corners of her mouth were down; 
he noticed that her lips, which had been full and bright 
in color when he married her, had grown pale and were 


120 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

pressed tight upon each other. He was glad when she put 
her hand through his arm. 

“All this is—you/’ she said. 

Later on, as they were going through the gate where 
their car was waiting for them, with the bored chauf¬ 
feur half asleep on the front seat, she pointed at a giant 
of a man with a two-hundred-pound casting slung in 
his hands in front of him. She and John Wolf stopped 
to look. 

He was one of the immigrants out of the nameless 
mob that come and go; his great feet, staggering under 
his weight and that of his burden, crunched the cinders 
as he swayed along. He was looking down—a creature 
whose mind is fastened to the ground, whose face is al¬ 
ways turned toward the earth from which he has sprung. 

From his low, concave forehead short-cropped, wiry 
hair grew backward, as hair grows from the face of a 
chimpanzee, and from it sweat poured, channeling the 
soot upon his skin, running over the ledge of his great 
jaws and down the cords of his thick neck, which, be¬ 
fore they were lost in the wet surface of his armor-plate 
chest and in the rolls of muscles in his shoulders, stood 
out like twisted strands of derrick-cable. His eyes were 
small and buried deep; his ears were large and attached 
to the flat sides of his enormous skull; his shoulders 
stooped, and his arms, with huge hands at their extrem¬ 
ities, were as thick and corded as a runner’s thighs. They 
reached below his knees. 

“You do not know any of your men?” asked John 
Wolf’s wife. 

“Few,” answered Wolf. “The plant has grown large. 
Once I knew most of them. Now my time is more than 
half spent in New York and Chicago. I’m not at the 
plant more than two months in a year. I have had to 




The Gorilla 


121 


leave the operation to others. The bigger we grow, 
the farther the top of the business must be from the 
bottom.” 

Mrs. Wolf was still gazing at the marvel of the crea¬ 
ture’s arms. 

“Half man, half animal,” the industrial king said in 
an irritated voice. “These Bohunks change their name 
with every job. If you want this one to have a name 
I’ll give him one. A new sleeveless shirt instead of that 
grimy one would be more useful. But I’ll give him a 
name.” 

The woman bit her lip. 

“Rolls of muscle are on the shoulders,” she said. 

Just then the worker dropped his casting on the flat¬ 
car and turning slowly, brushed the stinging salt drops 
from his eyes and peered out from under his furnace- 
singed brows at the man in fine wool and linen and silk, 
and then at the wife who stood by his side. The interest 
he took seemed like that of an animal directed at human 
intruders; in it there seemed to be something of stupid 
uncomprehension, something of curiosity, and something 
of sullenness, instinctive hate and fear. Head and neck 
and body were bent forward as if it would be easy for 
the man to move off the next moment on all-fours; and 
the wonderful, powerful, sooted arms were dangling inert 
and almost to the ground. 

“Call him ‘the Gorilla,’ ” said John Wolf to his wife 
with a laugh. 

She still looked at the man. 

“Come,” said her husband, snapping his watch-case. 
“I’m going to send you home in the car. I’ve got to see 
the superintendent.” 

She started to protest. 

“Business is business,” said Wolf, brusquely. And at 


122 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

that time he did not know that later he would recall every 
little detail of that moment. 

Not three weeks afterward he remembered them 
vaguely when, at four in the afternoon, he was dictating 
telegrams to each of the three receivers of a road which 
had carried a large account with Wolf’s Chicago selling- 
agents. Cowper, the superintendent, passed through the 
office with the company doctor. 

“Jim!” called Wolf sharply. “Have we had an ac¬ 
cident?” 

“Yes, sir. The foreman of the repair gang had the 
Number iq crane on that new Babbit plate-roller. One of 
the men was reaching over for the guide-rope of the 
tongs, and the two biggest ratchet-gears fed his right arm 
and one foot into the space between ’em. They did a 
finished job.” 

“Only needs a little trimming at the shoulder,” said the 
doctor, grimly. “The ankle may give more trouble.” 

“Any liability on us?” Wolf asked. 

“No, sir, I think not,” said Cowper. “Carelessness 
of one of the other workmen. We get let out. And, by 
the way, the C., Q. & B. shipment that their freight 
’department couldn’t trace had delivery to-day at Moline.” 

“First rate!” said Wolf. 

When he had finished with the stenographer he waved 
his hand to dismiss her, rose, and went to the window. 
On his face there might have been a look of haunting 
anxiety. He was worried about his wife. She had not 
been well. Life no longer seemed to interest her; she 
was always staring ahead of her as if far away in some 
day-dreams. And she had lost her color. Harwick had 
examined her and found symptoms of valvular irregu¬ 
larity in her heart. 


The Gorilla 123 

For the first time in his life Wolf realized that some¬ 
thing wholly outside of himself might affect him. He 
had tried to make this young girl love him. He had 
watched the gains he had made little by little in her af¬ 
fections. No one had ever been fond of him; now he 
was hungry for it. The possibility of losing his wife 
and her growing love for him, which so satisfied his soul, 
made him wince as he stood at the window looking over 
the mill-yard. 

They were taking a man on a stretcher toward an 
ambulance from St. Anthony’s—a man in a blackened, 
sleeveless shirt, half-covered with a clean sheet, staring 
white. The man was the Gorilla; Wolf had recognized 
him. 

“I believe I will take her to Chicago to-morrow,” said 
the manufacturer. “Harwick is a good practitioner, but 
she ought to be seen by a high-priced man.” 

A month later Wolf came back from Chicago, where 
he had made a speech before a manufacturers’ associa¬ 
tion. Many men in the iron and steel products trade re¬ 
member it, though that was nearly four years ago. It 
was the first speech Wolf had ever made. He had al¬ 
ways prided himself on being a man of action and not of 
words; he had prided himself on sticking closely to his 
business. He had been an individualist, with silent, 
gloating pleasure in his own school of philosophy. He 
had never taken much stock in conventions, associations, 
or trade fraternities. But the sweeps of applause which 
had greeted him, the power of his own voice—incisive, 
cold, but convincing and stirring—the delight in turning 
antagonistic minds into the channels of his own purposes, 
had intoxicated him. Just as late in life he had yearned 
for the love of woman; he now had tasted the blood of 


124 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

game brought down by the direct influence of his own 
personality; he had learned the pleasures of making an 
appeal to the hearts as well as to the minds of men. 

Wolf rubbed his hands. Things were going well with 
him. His wife, the Chicago specialist had said, had no 
organic disease. Exercise and diversion were the two 
medicines prescribed for her. The manufacturer planned 
to take her to Alaska. Spring had come with orders in 
plenty; the gross income figures were larger than any 
previous year; the ray of sunlight of the new season cov¬ 
ered the wide stretches of shops, the yard, the industry 
itself, so it seemed, with fingers of benediction. 

At this moment came Bernard Towle into the office of 
Wolf. 

“I wish you would let Towle & Benton have your cor¬ 
poration business without the real-estate and accident- 
case law which you send in to us with it,” he said, laugh¬ 
ing. 

He was a large man with a firm mouth—the legal 
mouth of judges—and a high, intellectual forehead with 
one mole at the middle of it. 

“I didn’t know there were any unsettled accident 
claims,” said Wolf, lifting the lid of a polished mahog¬ 
any cigar-case. 

“Only one,” the other said. “This man Hagoneska. 
Right arm and one foot. Single Man. God knows what 
nationality. A giant of a man—a huge, brutal, low¬ 
browed baboon of a man. Symons, the shystering am¬ 
bulance-chaser, got hold of him and is talking ten-thou- 
sand-dollar-settlement. We think it is time to put a stop 
to these compromises. There isn’t any liability whatever 
for your company, and if there were it is wiped out by 
contributory negligence and the carelessness of the man 
who started the crane moving. You aren’t responsible at 


The Gorilla 


125 

law for that. The poor devil won’t ever work again, and 
you can give him something if you want, only this is a 
good chance to teach Symons a lesson. 

“Go ahead and teach him,” said Wolf. “Corporations 
are always being the mark for bleeders. I think I re¬ 
member the man. We called him the Gorilla.” 

Towle laughed boisterously. “The Gorilla! That’s a 
good name for him.” 

Then and there the fortunes of the Gorilla went out of 
the mind of John Wolf. Towle & Benton sent a neatly 
typewritten note on their embossed letter-head when the 
suit was dismissed in the May term of the Circuit Court, 
and Wolf gave it to Preston for the files. 

The day that the manufacturer was planning to leave 
for Alaska, however, the Gorilla came to see him. The 
Gorilla tried to smile as he stood at the open wicket gate 
in the office, leaning with his one great sinewed, sleeve¬ 
straining arm on the polished rail. Miss Johnson saw 
only what was horrible in that concave brow with the tow- 
colored bristles rising from the forehead, in the small 
eyes set too near together, and the great hand eight inches 
wide which seemed designed for the hand of a strangler. 
And though the stupid, ingratiating smile exposed an 
even set of white, perfect teeth, even the smile frightened 
Miss Johnson, and the Gorilla pushed his way into Wolf’s 
Circassian-walnut office without interference. 

“Whatcha want?” asked Wolf, staring up in fear at 
the one-armed, one-footed creature which stood stooping 
beside the table. 

“You no remember me, uh?” asked the Gorilla, show¬ 
ing his beautiful teeth. 

“Whatcha want ?” repeated the manufacturer. 

“I work for you—me. I no can work any more. I 
no get money. No understand.” 


126 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Why didn't you come and see me instead of bringing 
suit?” asked Wolf, sighing with relief. “We don’t owe 
you anything. It’s up to you. You ought to be glad 
you aren’t married.” 

“I no understand,” persisted the Gorilla. “I work for 
you—me. Now—I no can work. You—Meester Wolf, 
eh? I no understand.” 

“What have you been doing since you left the hos¬ 
pital ?” 

The Gorilla raised the curtain of the western window 
so that the glowing light of sunset rested on his stupid, 
expectant face. 

“You look. You see city dump over freight-yard. I 
pick on dump and get coal—me.” 

Wolf shrugged his shoulders. 

The smile left the Gorilla’s face, and his thick lips 
closed grimly over his great white teeth. He perceived 
that the interview was at an end. Slowly hopping, and 
with each movement jarring the office with his weight, 
he reached his cane in the corner and hobbled out of the 
office. 

John Wolf picked up a yellow telegram: 

Drawing-room to Seattle reserved for you on 23d. 

Nason. 

“First rate!” said the manufacturer. “I was afraid 
we’d have to take two sections.” 

Thus Wolf went to Alaska, and the Gorilla went to 
the city dump. 

The city dump is the other side of the high board fence 
with the painted advertisements of talcum-powder, to¬ 
bacco, and ready-made clothing. The switching-engines 
shriek and scream like viragos in the yard on this side of 


The Gorilla 


127 

the fence, and on the other side fires burrow as gophers 
burrow. They eat down into the ashes and feed upon 
the debris of a city whose population nearly doubles 
between the censuses. The fires burrow; the little flames 
lick the night; white wisps of smoke rise in the sunlight; 
and rain comes and turns everything to a wet, soggy gray, 
across which horses drawing the city dump-carts tread 
patiently in time to the curses of the city employees, who 
move like shadows through the mists of early morning. 

On the dump is everything which the city has dis¬ 
carded—the refuse of the great struggle of civilization— 
the tin cans, litter of paper, torn scraps of letters, broken 
china, finger rolls of human hair, the abandoned riffraff, 
dust and ashes. Broken iron and worn-out machinery, 
rags, and half-burned-out coals are rescued from the 
debris. Such is the salvage of the dump. And for this 
salvage the Gorilla must have hopped about for nearly 
four years on his great ash-bleached shoe or dragged 
himself with his one great arm. 

No one can say—no one will ever know—what the 
Gorilla learned on the dump. There is time for stupid 
meditation there. Few come to pick over the ashes, and 
most of them are children. The Gorilla, it is said, slept 
over the stable which backs on the dump on the eastern 
side, but the dump was his. Rain or sun it was his do¬ 
main. Even the ash-men who came with the eternal pro¬ 
cession of blue carts piled with barrel refuse looked upon 
him as being a part of the dump. The dump was white 
with the dust of ashes. So was he. 

No one will ever know whether in those four years the 
Gorilla rejoiced because the dump extended farther and 
farther into the marsh, creating new sites for great in¬ 
dustries yet unborn. He may have measured the passage 
of time by the number of feet by which the dump ex- 


128 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

tended toward the oily river. He may have found scraps 
of scented letters which he could not read but yet might 
half understand through the animal instinct which linked 
him to his species; he may have discovered with wild 
joy some coin fallen by chance out of the world’s back 
door; he may have stared at the growing city beyond 
the wooden fences, always moving nearer with its wall 
of brick and its windows which were aflame when the 
sun was setting, and he may have shaken his giant’s fist 
at it until hate had all gone and he clenched his fist no 
more. 

Perhaps he did not hate at all. Perhaps he merely won¬ 
dered, as all his nameless mob of ancestors had won¬ 
dered, at life, content with his dump, with the sight of 
the dump-fires burning red under the black sky where 
stars burned white, with the smell of the river mists and 
the sound of the crunching cinders and of the loose paper 
which rustled as it moved, like a herd of sheep, from one 
side to the other of the dump with each shift of the wind. 
He may have found a flower sprouted on the dump and 
brave enough to blossom there. 

Wolf could not answer these questions. He forgot the 
Gorilla, forgot the dump. His was a broad aspect. He 
looked upon the painted canvas of the whole world and 
saw no details. Fate, no doubt, planning her schemes, 
saw little reason to disclose to him that he would see the 
Gorilla again. 

For a time I had no wish to speak of the flood, sir, to 
any one. It unnerved me. I was at one of the worst 
points. Not even Dayton had worse than came to us. 
And even now it seems to me that when I speak of it 
I am incoherent. I cannot remember the sequence of my 
own sensations. 


The Gorilla 


129 

Try to think of a wall of brown water suddenly ap¬ 
pearing where your motor-car was standing by the curb. 
A clerk from a store had just put a bundle into the back 
seat. There comes a second higher wall with a rush of 
floating things, and screams and shouts all about you. 
Then the great unceasing roar, the rush of water, buck¬ 
ling of building walls, the crash of ripping wood, the 
wind, the cold rain, great structures swinging from their 
bases, darkness, the wailing, the chaos, with faces white 
with fear and faces white with death staring as they flick 
by through that hellish whirlpool of the elements. 

John Wolf was with his wife on the north side of the 
river when the first brown wall of water came lifting over 
the banks and charged through the avenues, turning up 
each cross-street as it reached the corners. The two 
were in the back seat of their Berrisford “six,” and Pic¬ 
card, the chauffeur they had picked up in Marseilles, was 
at the wheel. The manufacturer took the woman’s 
white-gloved hand in his own and stood up under 
the car’s canopy, snorting with the instinct of self- 
preservation. 

He could see the settlement of two-story cottages on 
River Street swallowed in a dirty sea. Up from the bot¬ 
tom came a bobbing mass of wreckage—detached win¬ 
dow-blinds, loose timbers, strips of fences, bed-clothing, 
telephone-poles, struggling horses, dogs, and arms of 
people trapped by the flood. He looked through the space 
between the buildings, and across the expanse of the river 
he could see his own house with its white-marble pillars— 
a harbor of safety on the highest point of the South 
Bluff. He could make out through the sheets of rain 
and the gathering darkness the outlines of Jefferson 
Bridge. 

“Turn here! turn here!” he shouted to Piccard. “The 


130 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

left! the left! Take the bridge. Open her up! Take the 
bridge!” 

The car plowed on through the swash, and Wolf’s wife 
looked up at him admiringly and smiled as the machine, 
speeding in front of a second rolling onslaught of water, 
met concealed obstructions and leaped like a live animal 
in terrorized flight. 

“We are having a race,” said she, sweetly, with full 
understanding. 

Not until they reached the approach to the bridge did 
they see through the darkness that the flood had bored 
through the river-bank where the end piers were still 
standing. A black stream poured through the new chan¬ 
nel, and this stream was half of water, half of wreckage 
from up the river. It was inevitable that the car would 
plunge into this unfamiliar chasm. All three of the pas¬ 
sengers saw this before a new torrent of rain shut out 
the sight of the yawning drop. 

Piccard, climbing over the door of the car, leaped and 
was gone; the girl clenched her white-gloved hands and 
smiled sweetly; Wolf, throwing back his head, gave vent 
to one short howl of anger, fear, and hatred of destiny. 
Twice the unguided car leaped to the right, to the left, 
as if it had a desperate indecision of its own, before it 
threw itself upon the single steel girder which now was 
the sole connection between the granite piers and the 
shore. It hung there for a moment, then, with one vicious 
hiss, dropped out of sight into the torrent. 

The woman found herself lying flat upon her back 
on the half-exposed cap of the granite pier, staring up 
at the black sky, receiving the downpour of the cold rain 
full in her face. In her mind was the dim, vague mem¬ 
ory of reaching for the girder, of feeling the impact of its 
hard surface as the car fell out from under her, and of 


The Gorilla 131 

crawling along its narrow top until she could fall flat 
upon the stone ledge. 

She turned over to rest on her hands and knees upon 
the wet, rough surface of the pier-cap, and to stare 
down into the swirling brown maze and the network of 
wire cables which had toppled over from the bridge. 

In the West the sky-line had risen like a huge curtain, 
to project over the wide stretches of devastation the last 
glow of the day. The rain had lightened to a steady 
drizzle. The world for the moment was luminous gray, 
as it appears just before dawn. She brushed her wet 
hair from her face and stared down at the water, which 
was now eddying back around the bridge piers not eight 
feet below her. In this water she saw two men strug¬ 
gling to reach a cable-end which dangled down the girder 
to a point within an arm's-length of the surface. 

“John!” she cried. “John!” 

The one to whom she called gave no heed. Helplessly 
now he clutched at the roots of a tree lodged in the 
wreckage. His grasp was torn loose. He turned over 
onto his back and with a cough went under. The other 
man reached around in the brown silt-laden water, thrust¬ 
ing with his foot, as if to find the body. Again Wolf 
came to the surface, uttered a cry of despair, and threw 
his arms about the other’s neck. A great hand reached 
up, clutched the cable’s end, and the two men hung with 
their heads and shoulders above water. 

“John!” shrieked the woman. “John!” 

Her husband, exhausted and half suffocated, clung des¬ 
perately to the thick neck on which with interlocked 
fingers he hung his weight. He did not look up. The 
woman saw only the face of the other man as he stared 
at her stupidly. Fate had played her trick—the creature 
with the huge hand, the long, corded arm as big as a 


132 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

runner’s thigh, the concave forehead, the bristling hair, 
was the Gorilla. His white teeth showed as his lips 
parted in a simple smile of pleasure. 

“Good?” he grunted, inquiringly. 

She leaned far down till her face was as near the 
Gorilla’s as she could reach. The roar of the flood still 
seemed to threaten to drown out her words. 

“Hold him! Don’t let go!” she commanded. 

“Sure,” said the Gorilla, grinning like a petted mastiff. 
“I know him—me—Meester Wolf. Eh?” 

“Yes, I’m his wife,” she cried. “I love him. Do you 
hear ? I love him. Don’t let go. Keep the cable in your 
hand!” 

A wooden beam, riding the crest of a new swirl of the 
water, hurled itself at the Gorilla’s legs. He roared at it 
in pain and anger. It swung the two men far under 
the girder. But when Mrs. Wolf looked again, the giant 
hand with knotted muscles still clung to the cable-end 
and her husband’s arms still hung about the great, bare, 
corded neck. The Gorilla, grinning, looked up for her 
approval. 

Night had come. The woman could barely see the 
shore. She screamed for help. No answer came but the 
roar of the flood and some bell tolling far away. The 
wind wrapped her wet clothing about her, and, shut off 
from all assistance, she shivered in her loneliness. 

“John!” she cried. “John!” 

The man who swung on the Gorilla’s neck looked up, 
but answered nothing. 

“Woman,” called the Gorilla, “I fix him. He no 
let go.” 

She wrung her hands as she leaned back weakly 
against the girder-end. Suddenly she saw that these 
hands were still incased in white-kid gloves; out of the 


The Gorilla 133 

chaos of memory came the picture of her husband stand¬ 
ing up in the car and directing Piccard to race along 
before the wall of brown water. Now, half unconscious, 
she could hear the Gorilla growl at her husband in a low, 
constant voice. 

“Meester Wolf—you listen to me. You no let go. 
Your woman say you no let go. No, Meester Wolf— 
you be good fellow—you no let go. It ain’t long. You 
wait, Meester Wolf. No let go my neck, Meester Wolf, 
pleece. Pleece, Meester Wolf!” 

She heard this voice draw farther and farther away 
until it seemed to rise over the horizon. In a struggle 
to regain consciousness everything became black, and the 
blackness roared monotonously. How long she remained 
in this state Mrs. Wolf will never know. She was 
brought to her senses by the calling of her name from 
below. 

“Evelyn! Evelyn!” Wolf’s voice was repeating feebly. 

“I am here,” she answered, looking down at the two 
men through the darkness. 

“Good-by,” said Wolf, hoarsely. “I can hold on no 
longer.” 

“No let go! No let go!” the Gorilla was saying over 
and over and over again, like a piece of phonetic ma¬ 
chinery. “Pleece, Meester Wolf—no let go!” 

“My fingers are slipping. The pain is too much. The 
muscles won’t work. My fingers are slipping— Good- 
by.” 

The girl kneeling on the edge of the granite cap gazed 
around once more for possible help at this final moment. 
Far away on the rise of ground, where she knew the 
National Hotel and the Ohio Mutual Building had stood, 
red flames were leaping upward from the brick furnaces 
toward the sky. They were reflected on the waste of 


134 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

water which had spread far beyond the river-bed and 
now carried on its surface fantastic flotsam of destruc¬ 
tion. Nowhere was there a living creature within sight 
except those two below her—her husband, with limp body 
and groaning, delirious voice, and the Gorilla, whose hand 
still clung to the cable-end and whose broad, flat face 
still gazed up at her stupidly in the pink light from the 
conflagration. Upon that face was an expression of 
eternal patience under dull suffering. 

“I can’t/’ moaned Wolf; and one of his hands fell 
free. The other clutched the cords which strung across 
the Gorilla’s collar-bone. 

“Woman! Listen, woman!” panted the Gorilla. “I no 
can do more. You understand, eh? I no can do more.” 

She knew that in another moment her husband would 
drop like a plummet into the depths and be swept away 
into the chaos. 

“Hold him, I tell you!” she screamed, staring down 
into the Gorilla’s face. 

“I no can hold heem,” came the answer. “See! I no 
have arm this side.” 

She pressed her knuckles to her lips and gnawed at 
the wet, shiny kid-leather which covered them. The Go¬ 
rilla was still staring up at her. Light from the red 
flames on the hill illuminated his head and shoulders, 
and for the first time she could see that he had no coat, 
that his face was convulsed with grim agony, that the 
giant arm which hung to the cable-end had turned white 
as marble because the heart and arteries had long since 
failed to pump the circulation into it. There were black 
spots on the skin of his thick neck where blood had set¬ 
tled beneath the pressure of Wolf’s fingers. She saw 
them as the Gorilla, with a groan, looked up again and, 
trying to smile, showed his teeth once more. 


The Gorilla 135 

‘The teeth!” cried Mrs. Wolf. “Your teeth! He is 
slipping. Take his sleeve in your teeth!” 

The face of the Gorilla, pink in the firelight, broke into 
a smile, and immediately he bent his head, feeling with 
his lips for a hold upon the arm of the other man. He 
could not reach it. He growled. Then, with a writhing 
of his great body and a final tightening of his arm- 
muscles, he pulled himself upward, shook loose the hand 
which clung to his neck, snapped like a dog at the wrist-' 
bones of John Wolf, and buried his teeth in the flesh. 

Wolf was unconscious. He swung limply in the water 
and made no outcry. His wife, however, stared over the 
edge at the two bodies swaying below, and for centuries, 
it seemed, she gazed down. With spoken words she could 
not have done more to exhort the workman to endure. 
With no language known to him could he have given 
her greater pledge of his purpose. 

A falling wall in the fire on the hill sent a volcanic 
explosion of sparks into the black sky; after they had 
gone the light of the flames no longer illuminated the 
bridge pier and the water and floating debris below. Mrs. 
Wolf for a long time lay stretched out, with her eyes 
peering over the edge and her hanging hair swinging 
in the gusts of wind. She knew the men were still there 
at the cable’s end, because she heard her husband’s 
moans and the grunts of pain from the thick lips of the 
Gorilla. 

At about midnight she saw moving lights along the 
river-bank, and without changing the position of her 
body she turned her head to direct scream after scream 
toward the men who carried them. 

They came to her at last, over boards which they 
rested on the girder’s end. Their swinging lanterns threw 
strange shadows on the water below. 


136 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“My husband—John Wolf!” she cried, pointing down¬ 
ward. 

“Hand me the rope, Joe,” said one of the hoarse 
voices. “There’s a guy down here, and if I can slip a 
loop under his arms we’ll get him. . . . That’s good. 
Haul him up. He’s alive, all right. Somethin’s cut him 
on the wrist.” 

Evelyn stared at her husband’s white face as one of the 
men held his light over it. 

“Where’s the other?” she cried, suddenly. “Where’s 
the other—the other man ?” 

“Somebody else?” asked one of the men. “Where?” 

Evelyn snatched the lantern from his hand. She fell 
on her hands and knees again, lowering the flickering 
flame toward the water. 

She was the woman, sir, who told me this story. She 
held the lantern below the girder and saw the light re¬ 
flected on the brown torrent. She saw the broken riffraff 
of the flood racing down-stream. She saw the cable dang¬ 
ling there. But the Gorilla—the unnamed creature, out 
of nowhere, going into nowhere—he wasn’t there. 

The stranger, stopping suddenly, looked up at Stein- 
metz inquiringly. The banker stared back at him. 

In a shrub clinging to the edge of the precipice above 
the Gorgon Pass a mountain bird sang its evening song, 
and then from the depth of the valley arose the sound of 
a mechanic’s hammer in the hand of one of the repair 
gang on the job. A long shaft of sunset entering the 
shadowed valley rested for a moment on the stranger’s 
iron face. 

“Nothing but the spirit counts,” said he. “Accumu¬ 
late what you will: if, when you go, that is all you have 


y 


The Gorilla 


137 

left, you have left nothing. Nothing of a man remains 
but the immortal mark of the spirit. Only love lives on.” 

Getting up, he pulled his Norfolk jacket down about 
his heavy body and drew both cuffs of his soft flannel 
shirt from his wrists. Upon the upper side of his left 
arm, clearly defined, was a newly healed scar—the imprint 
of an even set of human teeth. 

Nodding a farewell to us, with his lifeless, expression¬ 
less face, he strolled back into the shadowed cathedral 
hall of the giant firs. 


THE SCREEN 


At one end of the room there was a screen. It was 
framed in black lacquer; it had five panels of thin wood, 
and in each, upon a gold background, there had been 
painted, by a famous Oriental artist, a part of the picture 
of a mountain seen through the branches of pine-trees. 

It was now five o’clock, or perhaps a few minutes later. 
A Japanese man servant, moving noiselessly, came into 
the room and put down a tray bearing two porcelain cups 
and a silver pot and accessories. He then went to the 
windows. 

For a moment he stood looking down from this corner 
apartment on to the wide avenue where the going-home 
motor-vehicles moved up-town like a running chain com¬ 
posed of links of varying size. Against the snow their 
tops were dark in color—mere moving rectangular figures 
on the white, and breathing vapors into the cold as if they 
were possessed of human lungs. 

The habit of this Japanese was to always look around. 
No matter how familiar he might be with a room, he 
never left it without searching it with his beady eyes, 
and sometimes even touching articles here and there to 
be sure that they were real. Having done so now, he 
nodded as if pleased to find the room empty and satisfying 
to his discriminating and artistic eye. He drew the cur¬ 
tains and turned on the light. 

The interior was a pleasant one, for although it was 
provided with furniture and decorations from several 
countries and from several periods, nevertheless it was 
138 


The Screen 139 

spacious; there were not many things in it, and what¬ 
ever there was represented nothing but fine examples of 
their kind. The Japanese nodded approvingly to the 
room as he withdrew, and then as if by afterthought 
went to the gold screen and rearranged its panels so that 
they furnished a barrier to any draft from the shaft and 
fire-escape in the rear. 

In the hall of the apartment he was heard addressing 
a woman who was approaching. “I have served tea. I go 
now ?” 

“Yes, Mr. Haig and I are dining out. You need not 
come back.” 

The woman who entered, walking through the soft 
lamplight to the fireplace near the tea-table, where the 
redder glow of the hearth embers fell upon her gown, 
was not old. She was one of those whom any one sus¬ 
pects of appearing even younger than her years. She 
had rich quantities of glossy brown hair which made a 
strange contrast to her active blue eyes under their some¬ 
what heavy blows; she had a fine skin of velvety texture, 
and yet this was not because of sloth and artifice, because 
the poise of her slight figure and the spring and vitality 
in every one of her movements made one think of out¬ 
door life and youth and an energetic ancestry. She was 
young and happy. 

She expected some one for tea; there were two cups 
there. Having looked up, however, at the small clock 
which she took up in her pointed fingers and turned 
toward the light, she shook her head, sat down, and 
poured her own as if she had given up hope of sharing 
the hospitality of these restful minutes of after-dusk. 

As she lifted the cup to her lips for a second draft of 
the aromatic tea she suddenly raised her chin, half closed 
her eyes, and remained motionless as one does who de- 


140 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

sires to concentrate one particular sense upon some 
incoming sensation. A sudden flow of cold air had 
struck across the back of her bare neck as one might 
be touched by the brushing contact of a limp and icy 
hand. 

Slowly she turned around in her chair. The screen 
with its black-lacquer frame and gold and dark green 
of pine-branches still covered the window in the rear of 
the room. It was motionless. It was non-committal. 
Nevertheless there lingered for a moment the unpleasant 
impression that the screen had moved. No hand would 
have been needed for this. Just the opening wide for a 
moment of the heavy and noiseless window might have 
admitted enough of the Winter wind to move the screen. 
She reflected, however, that windows do not open and 
close of their own will, but with another glance at the 
clock she relaxed once more. 

The reason for taking another look at the screen was 
not quite clear to her, but she did so, and then, humming 
a bit of song, she put another stick of wood into the 
flames. Only when she straightened her body did she 
smell the peculiar faint odor that comes from cigaret- 
stains on moist, cold fingers. 

Again she glanced around the room. She raised her 
own hands quickly toward her nose, and then, with the 
calm suddenly collapsing on her face, she turned a 
whitened, staring face toward the screen. 

A white and staring face was thrust out from behind 
the end panel. 

Not enough light fell upon this strange peering face 
to disclose at once whether it was the face of a man or 
of a woman. It was white. It was long and thin, and 
dimly showed an expression of a thin coating of anxiety 


The Screen 141 

as a veneer over a rather vicious countenance. It was 
like the cold death-mask of a warped personality. 

She expected to hear the words, “Don’t move or I 
will kill you.” 

She screamed one word, “Kaga!” 

This was the name of the Japanese servant, but there 
was no reply because he had gone. 

And then, just as if she were creating events by her 
expectations, the peering face said, “Don’t do that again 
or I’ll kill you.” 

“Who are you?” she said through teeth that chat¬ 
tered. 

“Huh! So you don’t know me, Amy—after all this 
time ?” 

“No. Who are you?” 

The man came forward—tall, white, long-faced, and 
with one long-fingered hand drooped down one long black- 
clad thigh. His gait was mincing and sliding, almost 
like a little childlike trot. It was like the noiseless trot 
of Death. 

“It’s just me—Tark—Tark.” 

“Tark!” she exclaimed in recognition. 

“Look at what I’ve got here,” he said with a low whis¬ 
per as if she were a fellow conspirator. “I got a weapon. 
Don’t let that frighten you.” 

He showed her an automatic pistol, black against his 
white hand. 

“I haven’t got anything against you, Amy—just against 
him,” he said. “I never thought I’d find you thisaway.” 

“You’re sick, Tark.” 

“I’ve been in Colorado for five years, but I gave it up.” 

He laughed. 

“I thought I’d see your husband before it was too 
late, eh?” 


142 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

Her first thoughts directed her eyes at the clock. 

"It’s about time,” he said, following her quick glance 
with the agility of his own. "I’ve been watching a bit 
for a few days so as to fix it just right. He comes home 
right prompt at five-thirty, eh? But I certainly never 
expected to see you. I just thought I’d wait for him to 
come in through that yonder door, eh? I was going to 
say sharp and harsh, ‘Cameron Haig!’—like that so’s he’d 
see me. Look here. I chilled my hands pretty bad com¬ 
ing up the rungs of that fire-escape, eh?” 

"Tark Ridley!” she gasped. 

“Yes’m, what’s left of Tark Ridley. Maybe I’ve 
changed some since I left old Hannibal, Missouri, eh? 
Why don’t you ask me to come up to the fire? I’m all 
shaky with fever. Yes’m, every afternoon it comes on 
strong as horse-radish. Lord, what I been through! I 
bet I look over forty. Let me sit here, eh?” 

"Yes—yes,” she said eagerly. "Sit down, Tark; sit 
down.” 

He put the automatic weapon in his lap and rubbed his 
spare knees. 

In the moments that were given to her to stand tremb¬ 
ling before this strange lank figure, all angles in its 
posture, like a sitting skeleton, she must have gathered all 
the poise of which her nerve was capable. 

"Well, Tark, this is a pretty piece of business—com¬ 
ing here like this,” she said reprovingly in attempt to 
give lightness to the situation. 

He twisted his lips into a ghastly grin. 

"I reckon it’s onusual,” he said. "Like enough no- 
body’d believe it. Somehow it ain’t natural for anything 
violent to happen to a successful New York engineer right 
in his peaceful, law-abiding home. But you ain’t 
dreamin’, Amy. I was raised from Tennessee folks. 


The Screen 


143 

You remember about that when I was acourtin’ you back 
in old Missouri.” 

She caught her breath and released it in these words, 
“But, Tark, you haven’t anything against Cameron— 
against my husband.” 

He turned his chair around so that he faced the empty 
doorway, and raised the muzzle of the automatic slightly. 

“Wait’n’see,” he answered. “Huh! Hell be here 
soon. He’s late to-night, eh?” 

Amy Haig stared at the doorway, listening perhaps 
for the sound of her husband’s key in the outer 
hall. 

“I guess you’ll scream when you hear him,” said Rid¬ 
ley. “But it won’t do any good. Hell come rushing in 
to see what’s the matter, eh?” 

Amy stared at him as if the devil himself were there 
reading her thoughts. After a moment the hoarse and 
whining voice of Tark Ridley began again in a listless 
monotone. 

“I guess maybe you think I’m crazy, eh? But I ain’t 
crazy. You said I hadn’t anything against him. Well, I 
have. You just listen now, Amy and see if I haven't/" 

“Speak quickly,” she said frantically and looked to¬ 
ward the front windows. 

Again he knew exactly what she was thinking, for he 
said, “Don’t you try nothing like that, Amy. If you did 
I’d have to put you into yonder closet, and then where’d 
your young husband be? I can handle you, Amy, even if 
I am a gentleman. I’m wiry, I am.” 

He thrust out one of his long-fingered, bony hands and 
clenched it so that knuckles and cords grew tense. 

“See! Wiry!” 

The girl shivered. 


144 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“You haven’t anything against him,” she repeated in 
a breaking voice. 

“I said I have, and I have. I’ve had time enough to 
think, eh? See if I’m not right. Weren’t you and I 
pretty close—down there in Hannibal?” 

“Yes,” said she, indulging him. With an effort she 
added, “Will you have some tea, Tark? You’re shaking.” 

“Thanks, Amy. That’s right nice. Five years ago we 
were pretty close, eh? Your pa was vice-president of 
the bank and I was owning a big apple orchard, eh? and 
pretty prosperous. You know about me, Amy. I was 
always strange and thoughtful, or leastwise all my folks 
and relatives said so, and that’s what took me out of 
Tennessee. I could ride and I was a good shot and all, 
but they said I had a woman’s disposition and couldn’t 
git along with none of ’em.” 

“They were good people,” she said. 

“I reckon they was. The best in Tennessee! But I 
was strange, maybe. I never could stay in school. I was 
too sensitive, they said, Amy.” 

“Hurry, Tark!” she exclaimed impatiently. 

“No, I sha’n’t. I ain’t in any hurry. I’ve got till he 
comes.” 

“Yes, yes, you were sensitive, I know. You told me— 
I could see it and you told me, too. You were an only 
child. Your mother let you get to thinking too much 
of yourself.” 

“Yes’m, and dreaming too much, Amy. I always was 
dreaming and writing down my thoughts. I was sensi¬ 
tive and dramatic. I was always playing at being some¬ 
thing I wasn’t; I reckon I still do. So you see I’m not 
crazy.” 

“Poor Tark!” she said with a momentary flash of sin¬ 
cerity. “I used to feel so sorry for you!” 


The Screen 145 

“You loved me a little!” he said accusingly. “I dragged 
that out of you once. You were the only one who ever 
knew what was underneath, eh? And you begun to love 
me. That’s what I can’t forget. No girl like you would 
have let me hold your hand if you hadn’t—and all of 
that.” 

She shuddered and then protested, “I don’t think it 
was real love, Tark; it was just pity.” 

“It would have been love if it hadn’t been killed, Amy,” 
he said, and then fell into a fit of coughing. 

“Well, you killed it then,” she said quickly. “It was 
you, Tark. You frightened me with your talk about 
love that would outlast death, and how if you should die 
you would come back, and how if any man took me 
away from you, you would go up into the highest moun¬ 
tains so as to be near the sky and swear to kill. You 
killed any love I might have had for you.” 

“No, I didn’t, Amy; he did it.” 

“No!” 

“I say yes, he did. He did! That’s my score with 
him, Amy.” 

“I’d never have married you, Tark. We wouldn’t 
have been happy. Besides if you loved me then you’d 
love me now, and you’d go away—you’d leave now. You 
haven’t any right to torture a woman you love.” 

He looked at her coldly. 

“Maybe I don’t love you now, Amy. Such things burn 
out after a while. Somebody else might get over it. 
Well, I did. I had to, Amy. I couldn’t stand it. I had 
to get something else to fill the hole. And I guess it was 
hate of him, eh?” 

“For what? He never did you any harm.” 

“Yes, he did. Didn’t you tell me so once with your 
own lips? Didn’t you say it that last night up on the 


146 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

pine bluff above the river when there was starlight and 
just the sound of a steamer pulling out from the levee 
and you was in that yellow-and-white dress and I went 
away ? Didn’t you tell me that I’d made a mistake telling 
you how’d I’d kill anybody who took you away from me, 
and how it frightened you to hear me always talking like 
that—like I was crazy; and didn’t you tell me you had 
a friend who’d advised you to send me away. You was 
kind and nice, but the friend you spoke of was him.” 

“I hardly knew him then. He’d just come from New 
York to lay out the drainage-work and he was calm and 
wise, and I asked him and that was his advice. He’d 
never seen you, Tark.” 

“He was planning to get me out of the way,” Ridley 
said, still shivering and all angles like a sitting skeleton. 

“No, no, Tark,” the girl protested. “He just said that 
any jealous man—madly jealous—was dangerous—was 
a dangerous man—vicious or a fool.” 

The visitor sat a long time staring at her. 

“That’s what’s left of my love for you, Amy. It was 
the only love I ever had and it meant everything to me. 
That’s what was left—jealousy. It’s eaten away most 
of me. It’s what the doctors couldn’t find. It got worse 
and worse. And look ahere-” 

He stopped, holding toward her a long cold, white 
forefinger. 

“Why, look ahere, haven’t I studied it all out for five 
years and more? There ain’t any love without jealousy, 
Amy. It’s the proof of love. He don’t love you enough. 
If he did he’d be crazy jealous like I was, and even when 
love had gone if it had been a big enough love, why, he’d 
be jealous still.” 

His head was nodding emphatically so that his nose, 
long and marble in pallor, pecked away at the air like 


The Screen 147 

the ivory beak of some strange bird. It was hard for 
her to realize that once he had been handsome; that once 
his eyes were calm and tender; that once his skin had 
been brown and ruddy with outdoors and health, and his 
hair thick. 

“Why, no!” she said, looking at the clock. It was ten 
minutes of six. She had abandoned hope of outwitting 
this murderous pilgrim from the past; she was relying 
upon an appeal to his reason. 

“No, what?” he asked. 

“Why, I say that jealousy is wicked, crazy, mad, 
Tark,” she argued. “Cam—my husband-” 

“What about him?” 

“His love is too great for that.” 

“It isn’t great enough. That’s what I say.” 

“Tark!” she said sharply. “Love is truth between 
people. It isn’t disbelief and doubt. It’s faith and com¬ 
plete faith. That’s love. No love comes until jealousy 
is gone.” She hesitated. “That’s the love he has for 
me. You couldn’t love me like that. He does!” 

“I wouldn’t kill him if he was a better man than me. 
What always set me on fire was the thought he couldn’t 
love you like I could, Amy. But I don’t think a man 
who ain’t jealous can love, eh?” 

“Yes.” 

“No, Amy. I’ve thought of that a heap. Somehow all 
these last few weeks it came down to that. The question 
was whether he ought to be killed or not, Amy. See how 
calm I think about it, eh? I certainly do. And it was 
all straight in my mind till you spoke. You don’t mean 
you’d want a man not to be jealous.” 

“I’d want perfect faith,” she replied. “Absolute and 
perfect faith, so that jealousy and suspicion would be 
impossible. Only that would be real love.” 



148 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Might be in angels, but it ain’t in men,” he said. “It 
takes a big love to kill. I reckon Cameron Haig wouldn’t 
kill for jealousy, eh?” 

“He loves me too much for lack of faith—or jealousy.” 

A look of doubt crept down over the long, grave, white 
face. Ridley arose and paced up and down, his head 
thrust forward on a neck so thin that it appeared to be 
the dried and whitewashed neck of a mummy. His gait 
was still that same short, sliding shuffle of Death.” 

“I’ve always figured this way,” he said at last. “If 
he loves you as much as I could have loved you, then 
he has a right to you, eh? I came to that decision long 
ago. And the question is, Does he love you enough to 
kill because of jealousy? That’s one side. And the 
other side—your side—is that he loves you too much 
to be suspicious and jealous at all.” 

“Yes,” she said eagerly. “And you can’t make up 
your mind?” 

“No. Somehow I never figured on that phase of it.” 

He looked abashed, embarrassed. 

“Then you ought to wait, Tark. You can’t kill when 
you’re not sure. You’re not yourself. You’ve thought 
too much. You’re burning with fever.” 

He looked calmly at her, admiring, without personal 
interest, her graceful figure, her great frightened eyes, 
the hair in rich coils, which contrasted so with her un¬ 
blemished skin, and the curve of her flexible, sensitive 
lips. Then he smiled in a manner to cause her to draw 
back as one draws back who has almost stepped upon 
a snake. 

“You’re not the kind of man who kills in cold blood, 
who brings misery and destruction with a coward’s shot,” 
she urged. “You wouldn’t do it before my very eyes!” 

“I don’t regard myself as a human being,” he answered. 


The Screen 149 

I regard myself like I was Fate and Justice. It hasn’t 
anything to do with cowards or misery. I’m just a hand 
of Destiny.” 

“But you want to be right, don’t you?” 

“Yes’m, Amy. I do.” 

He spoke with a note of sadness, as if expressing for 
all humanity its sorrows of misjudgment and error since 
the world began. He stopped suddenly and listened. 

“You think my husband is fit to die just because his 
love is too great for jealousy?” she asked. 

“It ain’t too great. It ain't great enough. If he was 
a man he’d kill—same as I will.” 

“Perhaps he would,” she said frantically. “Perhaps 
he would.” 

“You said he wouldn’t.” 

“I was only guessing. Perhaps if he were put to the 
test-” 

She stopped because suddenly the lean and lanky Rid¬ 
ley—that giant skeleton, angled and articulated beneath 
the cold, white flesh—had thrust his pointed chin out¬ 
ward and raised his hand with the automatic held loosely 
in his bony fingers. He was listening! 

“What?” she asked. 

“His key—key in the lock, eh? He’s come home.” 

“For God’s sake don’t do it, Tark,” she begged, trying 
to get near him to pluck at his sleeve. “You’re not your¬ 
self. Listen to me!” 

“I am myself! Yes, I am too! Get away from me! 
You want a chance for him, eh? Well, I’ll give it. 
Quick now! Hear what I got to say.” 

She was stiff with fear. She heard her husband put¬ 
ting his coat on the rack. With tense, agonized face she 
nodded to the assassin. 



150 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Sit right there,” he whispered. “Don’t you move. 
If you do—it’s all over, Amy. Keep facing this way. 
Don’t you say a word about me—not my name—nor any¬ 
thing. If you do—I’ll drop him down.” 

“What are you going to do?” 

“I’m going behind that there screen.” 

“Screen?” ^ 

“Yes’m. And if he asks who’s behind it and you don’t 
speak up and refuse to tell him—down he goes. You 
understand? You said test, eh? We’ll give him a test! 
JVe’ll see what he’s made of—whether he’s fittin’ to live.” 

The steps came down the hall. 

Ridley, with his strange, trotting, silent feet, like the 
feet of Death, crossed the rug and disappeared behind 
the screen. Suddenly the room seemed cleared of him as 
if he had never been there. The clock ticked audibly, 
the fire snapped and crackled, automobile horns sounded 
below on the avenue, the Winter wind slapped sleet 
against the window-panes. Cameron Haig came in rub¬ 
bing his hands. He said, “Hello, Amy, dear. All 
alone ?” 

“Yes, Cam,” she said in a sprightly tone. “Why don’t 
you go and dress for dinner?” 

“No kiss? What’s the rush?” 

He came and put his arms around her shoulders. 

“What’s the matter, Amy? You’re so white! You’re 
trembling!” 

“I was rather put out that you didn’t come home 
sooner. I had to have tea—alone.” 

“Lord, but you are suddenly temperamental! The 
trouble was that the car froze up. Rather stupid busi¬ 
ness. At last when Jimmy almost gave up trying to 
start her, I ducked into the subway. That’s all, Amy.” 

He sat down on the arm of the chair beside her and 


The Screen 151 

reached toward the box of cigarets on the little table. His 
hand stopped half-way. 

“Hello!” said he, staring at the table. “Tea? Alone, 
did you say?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why the two cups, Amy? Both used?” 

She imagined that the screen with its horrible gold, 
its horrible pine-trees, and its horrible mountains gave 
forth now a leer of triumph. 

“Because I-” 

“What?” 

“Why, I drank two cups. I poured the second one— 
why, it was just stupidity, dear.” 

“You seem all tense.” 

“It’s because of you,” she answered. “Go and dress 
for dinner now.” 

“Now? It isn’t time.” 

He glanced again at the cups and then all about the 
room, sweeping into the corners with his quick thrusts 
of inspection. He ended by staring at the screen. 

“Is it cold out?” 

“Why, of course,” he answered. “Awfully cold.” 

“What are you thinking about?” 

“Why that cup of tea—that second cup. It’s extraordi¬ 
narily suggestive of—-—” 

“What?” 

“Why, two people.” 

“Yes, isn’t it?” she said with clenched hands. 

Her husband glanced at these white, clenched hands 
and, jumping up, began to whistle. 

“Don’t!” she exclaimed. 

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t whistle!” 


152 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

He looked at her as he turned suddenly back into the 
light. He was a stalwart person whose face showed lines 
that come from strong, intense struggle, but there was a 
boyishness about him whenever he was in repose. That 
boyishness had suddenly left him. 

“Who’s been here, Amy?” he asked bruskly. 

“Nobody. I expect you to believe me. I think—I 
wish you’d get me a glass of water.” 

“There’s some right in front of you—ice and all.” 

She looked at it stupidly. 

“Well? What’s the use?” he said sternly. “Some¬ 
thing’s wrong. What is it? Who had that second cup 
of tea?” 

“For the love of Heaven, don’t doubt me, Cam—don’t 
doubt me!” 

He waved his hand. He said, “Where’s Kaga?” 

“Gone out” 

He grunted. 

“You’re not going to doubt me, Cam? You’re not— 
are you?” 

He appeared to be struggling within. He said at last, 
“No, Amy.” 

“Because love is faith, isn’t it?” 

“Yes.” 

“And even if some one had been here, you’d know it 
was all right? Wouldn’t you, dear?” 

“You mean if you said, ‘So-and-so has been here’? 
And you told me who ? Why, of course.” 

“But if I didn’t tell you who, Cam? Suppose it was 
just a test of your faith—your love? Suppose I said, 
‘Some one has been here, Cam, but don’t ask me to tell 
you any more; trust in me’? What then?” 

““You know I love you,” he said fiercely* 

“Enough to ask me no questions?” 


The Screen 153 

“But why? Why shouldn’t I ask? Don’t you see, 
Amy, how unfair it is to engage in such nonsense? I 
know some one has been here, Amy. Why shouldn’t I 
know who it is? There couldn’t be a reason why I 
shouldn’t know. What reason could there be ?” 

He was tortured now, and his gestures disclosed it, 
for they were the motions of a man who twists about to 
shed pain as one twists about to shed a tight and clinging 
garment. 

“I want you to love me enough to shut your eyes, your 
thoughts, your questionings—to put my love for you and 
yours for me above all else—submerging all else.” 

He looked at the two teacups on the table—a quick 
glance, but enough to make her regret her falsehood, not 
because it had been a falsehood, but because she had dis¬ 
closed to him that at first she had not told the truth. 
Then he sat near her and put his forehead down into 
his upturned palms. She was staring straight at the 
screen, at its field of dull gold, its pine trees and its 
snow-capped mountain, at the four cracks between the 
lacquer-framed panels, at the evil slits that barely con¬ 
cealed an evil eye and the evil, black circle of a pointing 
gun and the white, long-fingered, bony hand with its 
twitching muscles. 

“For God’s sake, Cam! Tell me! Say it!” the words 
burst out. 

He looked at her and smiled. Something in his smile 
might have given the lie to his words because in it there 
was cynicism and guile. His voice was kind, gentle, 
almost tender. 

“Yes, I love you enough, Amy,” he said. “I leave it 
to you. Tell me or not. I leave it to you, dear one.” 

“Shall I tell you?” 

“No.” 


154 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

She turned her head slowly and fearfully toward the 
screen as one turns toward an inexorable judge. 

The screen answered as if it had seen the smile upon 
Cameron Haig’s face and had looked deep into his 
thoughts. There was no question, as Amy knew at once. 
From behind the screen there sounded faintly the metallic 
click of some mechanism, and then, so softly that it might 
have sprung from her fancy, the sound of a human 
chuckle ending in a muffled cough, as if a skeleton hand 
had been clapped over those twisted red lips. 

“What are you looking at?” asked her husband. 

“Nothing.” 

He wet his lips and said, “It was your imagination, 
Amy.” 

As he stood up stretching his arms as one rising in 
the morning and yawning, she realized that the spit of 
fire from the screen, the nasty, darting tongue of flame, 
the snarl and bark and roar would topple him over on 
the rug and that a little dark pool would spread out from 
beneath his flattened body. But she answered him with 
the volition of surprize. 

“My imagination?” 

“Yes—that the screen moved.” 

“Screen!” 

“Yes, the screen,” he said. “It did not move—though 
one might have imagined that it moved.” 

She laughed hysterically. 

“We’re a bit nervous,” her husband said, looking at 
her with narrowed eyelids. 

“No, no, Cam, I’m not nervous.” 

“I think so. You ought to have—you ought to have 
a taste of brandy, Amy.” 

Her nails scratched on the fabric of the chair-arms as 


The Screen 155 

she said dully, “We have no brandy, Cam. You know 
we have no brandy.” 

“Oh, yes, I’ve my own secrets, old girl. I’ve a little 
stowed away here in the desk.” 

H$ turned his back on the screen and walked leisurely 
toward the old mahogany desk in the corner. When he 
had pulled out the lower drawer at the side he fumbled 
within, clattering about among odds and ends. 

“Hello!” he said. 

“What?” 

“It’s gone!” 

“The brandy?” 

“Yes.” 

“If you had it, no one could have taken it, dear.” 

“He did!” 

“Who?” 

“That man.” 

She darted a look at the screen. 

“Ha!” 

Her husband had caught her; she knew it. She started 
to rise and fell back limply, gasping, her arms dangling 
beside the chair. 

“Well, Amy, shall we give him a chance, eh?” 

“There’s nobody!” 

He grinned with an ugly showing of his teeth. She 
had seen for the first time the rising from within of that 
universal elemental personality that mankind buries under 
layer and layer of routine, manners, restraints. 

“I’ll give him a chance,” he said, his face reddened and 
tense. “You talk to him, Amy. You tell him what 
I say.” 


156 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“There’s nobody.” 

“Say to him these words, 'Come out here, you sneaking 
coward.’ ” 

“No—please! Cam! No!” 

He leaned back against the desk, half sitting on it, 
his hands behind him—still grinning. 

“Say it!” 

“You don’t believe me—there’s nobody there.” 

“Then why not say it?” 

“Come out from the screen, you sneaking coward,” 
she said with faltering voice as if she expected to hear 
a pistol-shot punctuate each word. 

The screen gave forth no sign. 

“He’s there,” said her husband, with his head thrust 
forward toward the screen. “He’s afraid! So that’s the 
kind of man you’re shielding, Amy? Why, my God, 
don’t you see—you’ve both confessed now?” 

The sentence broke into the hoarseness of agony, the 
peculiar crackle of one who sees life and happiness 
crumbling, toppling over, crashing down. 

“Trust me, Cam!” she begged. 

“All right,” he said. “You’re on my side, Amy. Shall 
I kill him?” 

“Kill him?” 

“With this?” 

She twisted her gaze away from the gold and lacquer, 
and then she saw that her husband had not engaged in his 
pretended search for brandy in vain. She believed at 
once he had done the one thing necessary to end him; 
he held a revolver in his fist, boring the air with it as if 
finding a way for its muzzle to lengthen out until it 
would touch the golden screen. 

“Come out, you dog!” he roared. “I’ll give you a 
chance. Come out! I’ll give you a chance.” 


157 


The Screen 

The screen was silent. 

“Well, Amy, which is the panel—the first, where the 
white stork is—the second, with the water and the 
mountain? Is he a tall man, Amy? Shall I allow for 
his crouching?” 

“For God's sake, Cam! He’ll-” 

“Ha! So you want to save him—you love him, eh? 
You! My Amy!” 

He raised the point of the revolver above his ear and 
brought the muzzle down slowly as one at target-practice. 

“My Amy,” he repeated ironically, and suddenly, in 
a chaos of passion, he crouched, grinding his teeth to¬ 
gether, filled with the fierce and terrible joys of that 
poised moment. 

She shut her eyes. 

A single shot crashed into the world of her nerves, 
tearing some gigantic hole as if her senses had woven 
a fabric only to wilfully pull it to shreds with a thousand 
rough claws struck into it at once. 

For a moment in the utter stillness that followed she 
did not dare to look. She could feel in her nostrils the 
tang of the smoke that had filled the room, and she 
opened her eyes slowly, in terrible fear. 

Her husband was standing quite erect upon the rug, 
the smoking revolver in his hand. It was not to be be¬ 
lieved! Yet there he was, his nostrils snapping with 
sharp intakes of breath, his eyes following some imagi¬ 
nary line to the screen where a little black hole showed 
above the mountain’s crest—a new decoration on that 
field of gold. 

The screen was quite inexpressive. It gave forth no 
motion, no sound, no sign. It stood there as it always 
stood through days of happy life in the home of two 
young lovers. It said nothing. 



158 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

Amy knew that it might speak at any second that 
dipped down and touch their destinies with the tip of a 
butterfly’s wing of time; she knew also that the person¬ 
ality it had assumed might never speak again. She found 
herself whispering, within, the exact words that her hus¬ 
band was going to say, and he said those exact words. 

“What have I done?” 

He was brushing his forehead with the back of his left 
hand, confused, staring at the gold and green of those 
lacquer-framed panels just as Amy herself stared with 
unblinking eyes. 

Then as if they were those of a messenger sent from 
far-off worlds through the night, the fingers of the Win¬ 
ter cold came and touched her lightly on the bare throat. 
She felt the almost imperceptible stirring of the air. The 
smoke of the revolver drifting near the fireplace, swirled, 
turned from blue to gray, and then began to settle again 
into swaying planes at the level of her eyes. 

Her husband had started toward the screen. 

“Wait!” she exclaimed. 

“What have I done?” he said, and, clutching the top 
of the black-lacquer frame, he threw the screen aside. It 
waltzed about as something human might reel, and, clos¬ 
ing its panels, toppled over onto the rug. 

Behind it there was nobody; behind it there was 
nothing. 

Tark Ridley had gone as he had come! He had given 
his mad judgment! 

Her husband stood staring stupidly down at the floor 
where the screen had stood for a moment until a great 
sob shook him. 

“God forgive me!” he said in a trembling voice. 
“Amy! Amy!” 


The Screen 159 

Running to her, he fell upon his knees, clutching at 
her forearms. 

“Amy, Amy. Do you love me? Tell me you still 
love me! Tell me you don’t blame me! Speak to me, 
Amy. I was mad with jealousy, dear.” 

She threw her arms about his neck and held him 
tight, gazing into nothingness. 

At last she said, “Don’t ask me to talk now, dear. 
I never knew you loved me like that!” 


f 




KEATS SHADD 

“When one’s life has gone before one is forty,” he 
said, leaning over the parapet with his long white hands 
prominent in the moonlight, “one realizes that brilliance 
and brains are like beauty in a woman. They lead to pit- 
falls. There are no victories other than the victories of 
character.” 

He looked down for a moment at the lights of the 
half modern, half medieval city, so different from the 
ports of his own America, and threw his cigarette into 
the cypress tops, impatiently, as if he himself had heard, 
as we had heard, a wistful hungry note in his voice 
and feared the disclosure of the mystery of his person¬ 
ality. 

“When one’s life has gone-.” He paused and said 

in his usual rich drawl, “Well, what about a little 

game ?” 

He had his table for dinner always in that corner of 
the hotel garden among the palms and the oleanders 
where the soft breeze brought the breath of France min¬ 
gled with that of Italy. When anyone joined him he 
always glanced up with a curious smile of silent welcome 
in a face still young but gaunt and sad, with its high 
cheek bones and dark deep intelligent eyes. At the same 
table when all was cleared away he played his bridge 
with three who were willing to lose a sheaf of franc 
notes in exchange for the comfort of his skill, his long 
silences and his apparent patience with mankind. 

No one thought of excavating the corners of his mind 
160 











Keats Shadd 


161 

or heart, or past. His name was Shadd. Those who 
had picked up acquaintance with him at this rare little 
hotel and knew him but without knowing him at all were 
seasoned men. There was the rheumatic diplomat, the 
rather puffy, puffing English barrister, the art critic 
from Paris who was taking the waters. They were will¬ 
ing to accept a man like Shadd as one accepts the flow 
of a gentle stream which, not offering itself for potable 
water, does not require a chemical analysis. He was an 
American, to all appearances well provided with money 
and alone in the world. He had a curious stern and 
aloof gentility which was none the less real because it 
might have been superimposed upon lack of good birth. 
That was enough to know. 

We all believed him unmarried from the first. To say 
why would be difficult. Perhaps it was because of the 
quick searching glance he used to throw at any woman 
who passed; not a glance that the woman might see but 
the brief half conscious look of a man who has searched 
a million women’s faces for something he had never 
found, something he never now expected to find, some¬ 
thing impossible, something he now looked for only in 
the performance of an old fixed habit. He would sigh, 
turn back to spread his cards in one hand while the 
long white fingers of the other twisted the thin black 
hair above his ears. 

We had the idea that he had been at some time an 
invalid learning the long road of pain to some final 
peaceful resignation. 

His first name was Keats—Keats Shadd. Some 
mother, long ago, smiling from a pillow at a new human 
mechanism may have felt a need to soften the harsh 
sound of that uncompromising cognomen. 

Shadd had chosen, as if fate had willed it, a spot for 


162 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

his dinners and our coffee and cards near the low thick 
old fortress wall above the gardens of villas. At night 
the little electric lamp on the table shed a radiance har¬ 
monizing with the perfume of pink roses nodding below 
in the faint wind. One could look down across the dark 
spaces toward the harbor outlined by dock and street 
lamps and hear, distantly, the calls of little hoarse voices 
from the city, the shriek of trams climbing curves and 
could smell the elusive aromas of the sea. 

A black cat used to stroll across the gravel, when the 
waiters had gone, choosing to rub its silky lean sides 
against Shadd’s lean, silk covered ankles and sometimes, 
pretending boredom, leaped up to doze across his knees. 
Between shuffling and cutting and the short, low mum¬ 
bles and exclamations of play we could hear the cat 
purr as if she had discovered in Shadd, who had lived 
toward forty, something new for a restless feminine 
soul to seek. 

Usually the cat would not even jump down to inves¬ 
tigate the night insects which had flung themselves 
against the larger hooded light above the arbor and had 
dropped kicking and fluttering into the circle of white 
radiance on the gravel. 

This circle of light brought Keats Shadd into an 
extraordinary difficulty wholly inconsistent with his 
apparent destiny. 

As we had been playing intensely and silently one night 
till late, we saw that Shadd had stopped, folded his 
cards and put his long hands on the edge of the table 
as if to steady himself. It was hard to believe that any¬ 
one could have approached so noiselessly and that the 
first evidence we had of her presence was the strange 
transfiguration of his calm expression. 

The retired diplomat, not seeing the girl who had 


Keats Shadd 163 

caused this sudden fixed intensity began a little exclama¬ 
tion which he turned neatly into a clearing of the throat 
when he perceived her. 

A young woman stood near us, alone, staring out over 
the distant lower city lights and the stars along the hori¬ 
zon exchanging twinkles with them. None of us failed 
to receive the impression that in her face there was a 
perplexity, a curious contrast between sophistication and 
the soul giving her the atmosphere of a lost child. 

She was neither distinguished nor beautiful, although 
around her was the faint aroma of promise of both. 
She was small, without appearing to be a figure of daint¬ 
iness but in her poise gave a suggestion of straight, up¬ 
right bravery. Her chin was rather Scotch in its prom¬ 
inent round firmness. Her skin was white—the kind 
that never accepts the brown and warm colors of sun 
and wind. Under her broad brimmed hat, reminiscent 
of civil war days, her hair, the most marked of her per¬ 
sonal attractions, was dark and ample in its sweeping 
folds. 

As she turned to glance once more and almost absent- 
mindedly at our table as if we rather than she were the 
cause of intrusion her eyes appeared to be of dark blue 
and like the eyes of an immature soul, of an unhappy 
but expectant child. Her clothes carried out this im¬ 
pression. They were smart clothes—an evening gown 
of high cost no doubt and a silken cloak over bare petal¬ 
like shoulders but in spite of the girl being more than 
twenty, they gave the impression of a juvenile mas- 
querade. 

She stopped for an almost imperceptible pause sud¬ 
denly searching Shadd’9 deep set eyes and then in a timid 
way, as one frightened or humiliated, she moved quickly 
off into the darkness and now only the careening bats 


164 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

played under the circle of light and threw down their 
whirling shadows like the falling of autumn leaves. 

As if he expected to see appear again in that emptiness 
some center of the universe, some dead center of the 
mysterious vortex of life, Shadd still stared for a brief 
moment. Then he played on, snapping the edges of the 
cards he laid down with that strange trick of a fingernail. 
He cast careless glances at the plays of the others and 
finally half shut his eyes so that his whole nature was 
now blanketed with his odd power of non-commitment— 
as inexpressive as a rough hewn heathen figure. 

Just why the French art critic who had the trick of 
knowing everything about everybody, thought it neces¬ 
sary to explain, is still obscure. Without any query 
being addressed to him he suddenly became voluble and 
vivacious. 

“Odd case,” he said in English. “Perhaps only odd 
because so typical. That girl is an American too. 
Father a banker, mother a petite alluring person even at 
forty. Sparkles. She might be a sister of this Fran¬ 
cesca.” 

“I know,” the retired diplomat put in. “They came 
last week. Name is Carson.” He tapped his cigar in 
the usual grand gesture. 

“Yes, Carson. Coming to Europe—mother and child 
—to look for Continental breadth. Usually breadth of 
morals concealed under the title of breadth of vision. 
A daughter to marry. And the mother carrying along 
in her baggage a longing on her own account for re¬ 
newed romance. Rather the luck of the two to meet 
Count Appolioni. Hungarian mother, Italian father. 
Or was it just the other way?” 

“Appolioni?” Shadd asked carelessly. “Is he here 
too?” 


Keats Shadd 165 

“You know him?” the Frenchman said, nodding in 
answer. “No?” He pulled the black silk cord of his 
monocle: he said, “You know the technique of the for¬ 
tune hunter. He would prefer a pretty girl—exotic, 
petunia colors—but that is not essential. Certainly not 
when there is the banker father and especially some 
money in the girl’s own right. The truth is that for the 
Count, pretty ladies have always been legion; money 
rarer. Then, of course, being an artist, he works 
through the mother.” 

Shadd sat up: the cat, disturbed and indignant, jumped 
down from his lap. 

“Yes,” the critic replied to the unspoken question. 
“Appolioni began of course by making love to the 
mother. That is the wise way. I fear he was success¬ 
ful. You know what it is for a light-headed woman to 
hunger for romance after thirty. She doesn’t get a very 
bright and fervid romance from the man who got his 
bad figure working at a desk so she could spend.” 

The English barrister puffed. “Something of the way 
of the world. And women, clamoring for rights!” 

The other shrugged his shoulders. “We may misin¬ 
terpret the rights they clamor for. At any rate Ap¬ 
polioni has succeeded in making the mother feel that 
unless he wins the daughter there’ll be some embarrassing 
revelations made in Philadelphia where the banker plods 
on. Besides the mother likes the Count’s manners. Tall, 
handsome, attractively villainous until in some nasty 
scrape or gambling debt or cheating at cards or hitting 
some lady in the face in an alcoholic manner removes 
the attraction from villainy.” 

“What a cad!” 

The critic turned as he played to glance contemptuously 
at the diplomat. “Why not? They exist—clubs takes 


166 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

’em in. Standards have gone all over the world we used 
to know. Titles and the sons of peasants—it’s all the 
same if they can dance and pay. This is the day of the 
cad. It is called the day of the female. Absurd! Turn 
free a lot of kittens and it’s great hunting for the foxes. 
Some stalk them with new philosophies and others merely 
seize the chance by the nape of the neck.” 

Keats Shadd was interested! He opened one eye. 

The barrister said: “Too bad a young girl like this is 
to be the victim. Really! No doubt she’s played on the 
edge of this modern madness to the tune of jungle drums. 
But they don’t know life, brutality, desertion, beastli¬ 
ness. No doubt this one thinks she is getting a fairy 
prince.” 

The French critic played a heart. 

“Appolioni will get her,” he announced. 

Shadd shook his head in negative. 

“Five thousand francs,” the retired diplomat chal¬ 
lenged. “That is, unless the father is notified.” 

“Oh, he’d believe the mother and the daughter, too, 
once she thought she was in love. He’s undoubtedly that 
kind of a kind.” 

Keats Shadd said with a smile: “I only bet on 
horses.” 

He appeared to be looking again at the spot where she 
had stood. The bell on some church in the medieval town 
tongued solemnly. 

The diplomat had his pocket-book out, pulling at the 
sheaf of foreign banknotes. 

Shadd folded them gravely. He looked suddenly 
younger. He held his body straighter, his eyes appeared 
to have moved forward in their deep setting. In these 
eyes there was reminiscence and expectancy. He ap¬ 
peared to be reaching back in a primer of life where 


Keats Shadd 167 

,the lessons once learned were no longer difficult to 
review. 

“Appolioni?” he asked. “Was that the name?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good-night.” 

“Good-night.” 

******** 

The next day, after luncheon in the covered sun room 
with its yellow pongee curtains throwing their curious 
soft-golden light across the cups and plates and glass, 
Shadd strolled forth. He met the mother under the 
shade of the arbor with its. long prospective of green and 
mottled light leading to a fountain where a rather re¬ 
pulsive sensual marble face emitted water from its 
bearded mouth. Keats had a way of meeting people. 
His manner evoked curiosity and then suddenly when 
eyes were fixed upon him he would turn and say, in 
expression if not in words, “Well, so this is you in par¬ 
ticular who at last have an interest in me?” And if the 
other was not unduly shy some kind of response would 
be forthcoming. 

Mrs. Carson was not unduly shy. Except for the lines 
at the corners of her eyes, fairly powdered over, and a 
looseness of the flesh beneath the chin which somehow 
never could be massaged away, she retained the sem¬ 
blance of vivacious youth. She was the kind who on a 
steamship could be so cold and socially superior while 
she had it in mind but whose natural tendency was to¬ 
ward exploration of men's inner beings and a pell-mell 
flow of words about books, psycho-analysis, the Einstein 
theory, which she confessed she could not understand, 
and the particular hotels where the cuisine excelled. Trim 
and youthful ankles were always stretched forth and 
when possible a parasol was laid between them, at one 


168 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

end jewelled slender fingers, at the other the tips of 
pointed slippers. 

Her eyes, less deep in blue than her daughter’s and less 
vital, could however be made to dance whenever a tune 
was played upon her ego. 

“Are you an American?” she asked blithely as if she 
had sleuthed Shadd all the way from continent to con¬ 
tinent. 

Keats stood in front of her, without a word, nodding 
solemnly, as if discovered. Then slowly his grave mouth 
relaxed and they laughed together. 

“I asked,” she said, “because so few Americans carry 
in their faces the many-sided, the depth-reaching ex¬ 
perience.” 

“You do not,” he said, sitting on the old Roman bench 
and crossing his lean legs. “You appear never to have 
been touched by the wear and tear of life at all. Nothing 
has consumed you.” 

“Aren’t we deliciously personal?” she asked. 

“Exceptionally.” 

She nodded, but it was not exceptional for her to be 
personal; she was never anything else. It was not neces¬ 
sary to know her history. It was not even necessary to 
know that the same father who had provided so well for 
his grand-daughter Francesca had done his best and given 
Mrs. Carson what the world calls “everything”. She 
must have driven thoroughbred horses before marriage 
and loved sophistication and been quite tolerant with men 
who had too many cocktails before dinner. She must 
have consumed books to talk about them across white 
cloth and silver and thought of marriage as a kind of 
inevitable refuge and necessity of the conventions. The 
loving old gentleman, her father, had given her every¬ 
thing but the true values in existence and the chance to 


Keats Shadd 169 

develop her spirit. Shadd drawled it in a sentence later. 
“Her eyes were empty.” 

Keats arose slowly as if he were about to make off. 

She spoke as if they had indulged in long intimate dis¬ 
course. She was not used to men who threw such in¬ 
tense interest in her towards her and then reeled it all 
in again. She said “I suppose we can continue this 
conversation one day.” 

Suddenly Shadd released himself. He appeared all 
eagerness. 

“Would you dine with me?” 

“I have a daughter with me.” 

“An only child?” 

“How did you know?” 

“Something in the way you said ‘a daughter.’ Not 
‘my daughter’ but ‘a daughter’.” 

“You are just like a doctor,” she said admiringly. “A 
great doctor. You see every sign—every little sign. I 
see nothing—positively nothing. I only know the people 
I like. You’re not a doctor?” 

“No.” 

“I think you might dine with us—say this evening at 
nine.” 

Shadd bowed low and gracefully: it was an acceptance. 
He strolled off, stopped here and there to kick a stone off 
the gravel path as one who meditates alone on some 
drama just witnessed and the eyes of Mrs. Carson, as he 
knew, followed him. 

He was there at their table under the arbor in the even¬ 
ing and across from him was Appolioni—a strange con¬ 
trast. 

The Count was a young man not without a certain 
beauty. His hair, long, brushed back, showed a fore¬ 
head suggestive of ancestors who lived in castles, were 


170 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

patrons of the arts and sat under cypress trees in formal 
gardens, listening to poetry about ladies beautiful and 
true. His lips had a fulness speaking of profligacy. His 
nose was long and already in youth a little hawklike as 
one which knew how to pounce upon living beings and 
upon beasts. Something in his eyes might have dis¬ 
closed craft, cruelty and agile resourcefulness to one 
warned to look for these qualities. 

No one could have failed to see that the contrast be¬ 
tween that face and Shadd’s was like the contrast be¬ 
tween the equator and the poles but this was not the 

interesting fact. The interesting fact was that as they 

talked across the table over their coffee and liqueurs, sud¬ 
denly it became evident that Keats might once years ago 
have resembled this somewhat younger man. He had 
the high forehead, the hawklike nose, in his deep set eyes 
some remaining traces of the shrewd cruelty and now 
and then the darting feline gesture of the hands. 

Francesca who had shown vivaciousness, interrupted 
by that curious childlike melancholy, turned quickly 
toward Keats when he himself expressed the thought 
written on the two faces. 

“I cannot look at you, Count Appolioni,” he said, 
“without a sense of having once been you. How strange 
such a feeling is! How it brings back youth, loves, 
laughter and—shall I say it of myself—the mistakes!” 

Francesca sat up quickly. She had been scrutinizing 
Shadd’s face as he spoke. His slow voice had fasci¬ 
nation. 

“You are not old,” she asserted. 

Shadd smiled. 

Appolioni into that inscrutable smile remarked politely, 
“Your mistakes do not appear to be the mistakes which 
deprive one of material prosperity or health. ,, 


Keats Shadd 171 

“Oh those are the little mistakes,” Shadd replied. “I 
often wonder why people give them great value. It’s 
only the spirit which bears the unhealed scars—something 
dead within.” 

Mrs. Carson, moving uneasily, stirred her aura of 
heavy perfume. 

“I am an amateur in the occult,” she affirmed with 
a suggestion of suspicion. “I love to live close to reali¬ 
ties. They make me feel so much safer.” 

Francesca folded her young hands. 

“How silent you are tonight!” Mrs. Carson exclaimed 
to her, in a low voice. “You areas if you were drugged.” 

“Stop nagging me, mamma,” the daughter whispered. 

Shadd looked at Francesca. Her eyes met his. 

Appolioni, beneath the corner of the table cloth found 
the girl’s hand. It was cold perhaps, because it was plain 
that he pressed it almost violently in his own as one 
who resents chill. 

“Do you play bridge ?” asked Shadd to Appolioni. 

Mrs. Carson leaned over and said in a low voice to 
him, “They are going for a walk. Lovers. We should 
be envious.” 

“Oh!” 

But Appolioni spoke up. “Perhaps, little one, you’d 
wait and take the walk later—at eleven.” 

Francesca saw her mother’s vigorous nod. 

“Yes, of course,” she said. 

The waiter leaned over whispering to the young 
Count; he spoke of a telephone; his voice dropped to a 
whisper. The other said in a low impatient voice, “Say 
I’m not here. What a fool!” 

With bows Appolioni and Shadd made their departure 
to Keat’s little table in the corner of the garden where 
the little lamp disclosed the French art critic and the 


172 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

diplomat waiting, one idly shuffling the new cards and the 
other rolling the sharpened score pencil beneath his fat 
palm. 

It was evident that Appolioni had been warmed by 
champagne and the liqueurs. He had the air of elation 
and self confidence. He was restrained but underneath 
the surface one could see that he was the young Roman 
emperor exulting in power, conquest, possession, the 
swift blood of youth. He ordered a whiskey and soda. 
Something in his manner suggested a trace of contempt 
for Shadd. Shadd was stupid, negligible, out of life’s 
swift current. And yet there must have been a haunting 
fear of some strength in Shadd which was almost a 
challenge. 

The Count, unable to restrain his feeling spoke of 
Americans. 

“Why the irritation?” the diplomat said. “The world 
is already so full of attributing bad motives.” 

“Not bad motives,” Appolioni replied hotly. “Who 
ever dreamed of Americans as a whole having had 
motives? No doubt they do but what of that? I was 
speaking of lack of subtlety, simple thoughts, simple acts. 
Directness almost amounting to stupidity. Pardon me. 
Rut —Dio mio !—no game of wits. To play safe daring 
nothing.” 

“In what?” Shadd asked. 

“In love—that’s an example—in love.” 

“Storm the castle by moonlight,” Keats suggested. 
“Oh, that’s usually so unsuccessful. It takes a better 
knight to induce the princess to lower the drawbridge 
at high noon when she’s thinking clearly.” 

“The castle’s the thing!” exclaimed the young Count, 
blearing a little. “I wonder if you, my dear sirs, will 


Keats Shadd 173 

pardon me if I ask Mr. Aylesworth to take my hand 
on this deal ? I promised my fiancee-” 

“We understand,” said Shadd quietly. He bent 
his head over his cards; he appeared to wish to conceal 
twisted features disclosing some passing agony of being. 

In those days he never saw Francesca alone. He might 
have done so. He might have joined her when she 
walked out through the terraced garden toward the ten¬ 
nis courts where Appolioni was engaged in some match 
in his peculiar erratic, brilliant, passionate and usually 
losing style of play. But Keats, though he followed her 
with his eyes—seeing perhaps something none of us ever 
saw glimmering beneath her youth, faintly visible like a 
secret writing on a blank slate, always turned and walked 
the other way toward his book. 

Once he met her in the hall where at the desk of the 
concierge, strewn with thumbed guide books below the 
glass case of unclaimed letters in their compartments she 
was waiting to file a telegram. He found himself be¬ 
hind her and supposed he was unobserved and that she 
was unaware of his presence. To say that he made a 
motion now appears untrue; the eye declared that, in¬ 
stead, he gradually stiffened as one who exercises with 
all the force of will a restraint of impulse. There was 
only there, for that moment, a ghost of desire, a passing 
shadow of some inner yearning to take into his empty 
arms all that he craved not with his earthly being but 
with something finer and more eternal. 

The mirror above the table behind the walnut rail re¬ 
flected him and Francesca saw. She did not turn. She 
put her hands on the rail and stood waiting as if she 
too had seen some spirit creature who had reached toward 
her. 



174 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

‘Til call the concierge,” Shadd said with a slow calm. 
He bowed to her, as she turned, with his peculiar gal¬ 
lantry—a gallantry which always seemed to be free from 
perfunctory performance and freighted with some dis¬ 
crimination between one person and another, as if his 
politeness were made to measure by an eager artisan of 
manners. If he had met the deep blue eyes of Francesca 
looking out at him from beneath her heavy dark brows 
from the mirror he gave no sign. The drop curtain of 
kindly impersonality had come down upon the play of his 
face. 

An evening or two later, as he dined alone, he glanced 
toward their table, where Mrs. Carson, always seeking 
to whip her weary nerves, Appolioni loving the hot singe 
and Francesca perhaps by smart country club habit were 
lifting the frosted cocktail glasses. It was only a glance, 
a swift look to call the black and white figure of an idle 
waiter. Francesca over the edge of her glass saw it. 
She put the cocktail down and then, after Shadd had 
leaned over his hors d’oeuvres, raised it to her painted 
lips and put it down again. 

As we had coffee later he said in connection, it ap¬ 
peared, with nothing, “They imitate the mothers. This 
generation is a little weary of the sheep herding; the 
next may turn to something rather fine.” 

The diplomat caught the idea. “Well it was the war,” 
he said. 

Keats shook his head. “No,” said he. “It was the 
fattened prosperity,—the toys of material the children 
fought over. It was the mothers;—many were like that 
while we were saying that war had gone forever from 
the world.” 

He played his card and glanced at the stars woven into 
the black veil of the sky. “I’ll bet they played jazz in 


Keats Shadd 175 

the Baths of Caracalla,” he drawled. “Huh. Can you 
picture the youth of Rome peeking in and saying—“Well 
that’s life! There’s mother!” He snapped the edge of 
a card with his nail. 

Francesca’s birthday came. Appolioni, it was said, 
gave her a magnificent brooch—a thing of diamonds and 
emeralds. He bought it on credit. Everyone knows how 
gossip runs in these middle-sized Continental cities—ex¬ 
actly as it runs in a small Western town. They said 
that he bought the brooch from the same curious Parsee 
dealer on the Street of Valor as it is now called; to whom 
four years before he had sold the last of the heirlooms 
from his mother’s casket. He had been interrogated 
about pay—“I will pay when I am married,” he said. 
The Parsee dealer who always, indoors and out, wore a 
European hat on the back of his head, pressed his fat 
thumbs on the top of the glass case. He knew already 
the address of the Philadelphia banker, Mr. Carson. 
Credits were his specialty. 

To Francesca, however, the event of her birthday 
brought into high relief her attachment to the qualities 
of childhood. She had been appearing a little worn as 
if her engagement had swamped her. Now she was 
twenty-one and the fanfare made by those about her 
brought color to her cheeks, fresh lights to her eyes, a 
vivacity to her figure. Her luxurious hair was brushed 
back from her forehead, adding something of imma¬ 
turity and irresponsibility at the same moment that it 
gave to her something a little chaste. Her gown was 
black: it emphasized the whiteness of her shoulders still 
in the contour of childhood but promising richness of 
maturity. She had for the moment been raised out of 
the class of those who might be suspected of having 
been plain in appearance or those about to become so. 


176 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

There was in her this night an authoritative promise of 
future beauty, whether merely physical or some other 
beauty one did not stop to analyze. It hovered about 
her. The painted lips could not dispel it. 

The diplomat was invited to the dinner: he had a 
title. There was a young man with dull eyes—Appo- 
lioni’s friend—a friend who served the young Count 
stupidly and occasionally began to engage in violent 
quarrels which mere weariness prevented him from fin¬ 
ishing. He usually pleased the Count because there was 
a kind of adoration in him, a kind of worship of a 
handsome profligate who had greater vitality. Now he 
had come up from Monte Carlo where, he told Keats 
Shadd that he had lost heavily. 

“Doesn’t Appolioni always do the right thing!” he 
exclaimed, gathering energy from the comment. “Fine 
marriage.” 

“Fine marriage!” Shadd repeated with the slightest 
variation in inflection. 

We were all at a table over in the corner of the gar¬ 
den. Pots of flowers were all about and there was 
enough of the breeze from the sea to keep all the gnats 
away. “A jolly occasion,” the diplomat said, tasting 
his sherry and repeated it with the red roast and the 
red wine when the conversation was in full efferves¬ 
cence. It was his contribution to a chatter irresponsible 
and without direction. 

Keats Shadd had come to the table at the last mo¬ 
ment almost casually, a book in his hand and his finger 
marking a place in it as if he had not intended to stay. 
And, though he spoke often, it might have appeared 
that only the shell of him was present, that his real self 
was far away, perhaps journeying back over roads al¬ 
ready travelled long ago. There were complexities in 


Keats Shadd 177 

him. He may have been bidding instinctively for his 
moment: if he were he was successful. 

Strange business—that of serving as they do in some 
corners of the world champagne with sweets. It was 
at this juncture that Mrs. Carson having listened to the 
high colored compliments Appolioni paid to Francesca 
over his glass, in her cooing voice said: 

‘‘Haven’t you something to say, Mr. Shadd?” 

Keats looked up quickly as if surprised. 

“I mean a little speech,” she said archly. 

He laughed and replied gravely, “Perhaps I came 
prepared to make a speech. I have a speech. It’s short 
too. I’ve often thought of it. I’ve often wondered 
where I would deliver it. I never thought I would de¬ 
liver it here—under these circumstances.” 

He looked about quietly. The waiters had gone. 

“It’s a speech to a young girl,” he announced. 

Appolioni exclaimed, “Hear! Hear!” and the dull¬ 
eyed young man coughed and leaning forward re¬ 
garded Shadd with intense interest as if the latter had 
just come to the table, nameless, a creature out of the 
dark of a half supernatural world. He saw a strange 
look of intensity in the deep set eyes as Keats turned 
them first toward one and then toward another at the 
table. 

“It’s a curious speech for a bachelor to make and I’m 
not sure that many bachelors would make it,” he said. 
“But it comes from one who has known and as the say¬ 
ing goes has loved many girls, old and young, and has 
learned that most love is really not love at all. I’m 
afraid that many marriages are not love at all—espe¬ 
cially when one considers that they must not last for a 
year but often for a whole life.” 

He leaned forward over the table knocking over an 


178 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

empty glass and feeling for it with his long fingers 
but without taking his eyes now away from Francesca’s 
face. 

“Perhaps this isn’t a speech. It may be a boast, too, 
because I have loved many women and they have loved 
me, but it is a comparison, too, because all that I ever 
loved until now in a woman was love of myself and 
that is a kind of gruesome love, burning the spirit to 
ashes. And all that women have ever loved in me until 
now was something in me that for a time enslaved them 
and made them see in me not what I really was but 
something I convinced them I was.” 

The girl across the table put down her fork. 

“So I am glad I never married. It would have been 
a tragic thing,” he said. “It may appear strange to hear 
an old buck like me—approaching the gray seer years 
talk like this but I do so to show that my speech to a 
young girl—particularly to a young girl perhaps soon 
to be married—is not delivered by one who is not an 
authority—an authority on mistakes.” 

He held his napkin under his firm chin for a moment 
and then as if he had taken a decision he let it fall. 

“If I were a young girl,” he said, “I believe I would 
think of the young man who had asked me to marry 
him. It would be easy for the young girl to think of 
herself and to protect herself against harm to herself, 
her growth, her happiness. In these days of intelli¬ 
gence it is surprising that so few girls ever think of 
these plain things of selfish consideration.” 

Mrs. Carson stared not without a trace of alarm in 
her hard eyes. She might have been wishing that she 
had investigated the social standing of this strange un¬ 
indorsed American who now, in some way appeared to 
be a skeleton at the feast. 


Keats Shadd 179 

“That is too subtle for me,” Appolioni said in the 
pause and endeavored by a motion of his body to at¬ 
tract Francesca’s eyes. 

“No, quite direct and plain and—American,” Shadd 
said with a laugh almost merry. “I mean that a young 
girl who thinks of herself selfishly must be sure—as no 
doubt the guest of honor at this dinner is sure—that 
first of all she chooses marriage and love, of her own 
free will. It is easy for some girls to be influenced by 
others into a marriage. It is easy for older persons 
to set in motion a girl’s imagination and wheedle her 
into marriage. That is one way marriages are made 
without the girl’s own intelligent free will being in 
control. But it is worse yet when a man uses the ro¬ 
mantic urge of young love to chloroform a girl’s free 
will. You think a young girl would stop to think that 
it must be only herself, standing alone without others 
who must make the decision and certainly you’d think 
a young girl would pause for a moment to be sure that 
she was not being captured and made a mere possession 
by a young man skilled in weaving romance all about 
her. You’d think she would ask herself ‘Does this man 
really love me or in loving me is he really loving only 
himself?’ 

Francesca met his eyes as he paused again. She had 
suddenly, it appeared, lost her color. The vanity case 
went around and around in her fingers like a little mill 
wheel. 

“Well I meant not to speak of the young girl who 
was wise enough to protect herself from capture and 
becoming a mere possession. I meant to speak of some¬ 
thing perhaps still higher in her duty. She ought to 
protect the young man, too.” 

“Bless me,” breathed Mrs. Carson. “What an idea!” 


180 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“I thought it was an idea,” said Shadd. A look of 
bitterness and pain came into his face and it was re¬ 
flected one could see in Francesca’s face as if it were a 
mirror. The song of the bell in the old church far be¬ 
low drifted up: the leaves of the oleanders stirred as if 
awakened from sleep. 

“I thought it was an idea. It is the great obligation 
a young girl has to a man. She may be merely enslaved 
and made miserable because she is a mere possession 
and she may still escape without death to the spirit but 
death to the spirit comes to the man who has enslaved 
her. If he has swamped her free will by mere temporary 
warmth of romance it is something within him which dies. 
If he has captured nothing but a possession and has not 
found a soul which can stand alone and free, side by side 
with his, he has been cheated of real love and real woman¬ 
hood—perhaps—forever. ’ ’ 

Into Shadd’s voice there had come a mere trace of emo¬ 
tion, but it was not emotion which dominated his voice. 
The dominant note in his voice was the note in the voice 
of fate stating immutability. He had finished his sentence 
and yet there remained the resonance in the air as if from 
a gigantic bell. 

To say the faces about the table were frightened faces 
may be absurd; to say that when Shadd suddenly smiled 
there was an immediate relief from tension is indeed true. 

“It is upon the assumption-” Keats began, again 

rising to his feet and lifting his glass. 

Francesca’s voice, tense, quiet, hardly audible inter¬ 
rupted him. 

“Let’s not have any more toasts,” she said. 

“Why not ?” Appolioni asked almost roughly. 

“I’m tired. I don’t want any coffee, Mother.” She 
was white. 



Keats Shadd 181 

“You’ve frightened her,” Mrs. Carson said indignantly 
to Keats. 

“I’ll take you, dear,” Appolioni said. 

“I’ll go alone.” 

“No, I’ll take you,” he asserted and took her bare arm 
in his grip. He was all tenderness but his eyes. “Come 
toward the tennis court with me. There’s a moon.” 

As she yielded, her head moved forward as if strength 
had gone from her. 

An hour later she came out of the shadows of the 
arbor, looking to the right and to the left as if seeking 
any refuge. Her cloak dragged on one bare shoulder. 
Her hair no longer had its neatness. She was out of 
breath, panting, whiter than ever. 

Mrs. Carson was on the steps. 

“Mother!” exclaimed the girl. “He wanted to kiss me 
and I’m so tired of kisses unless I want them.” 

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Carson. “My dear child, 
what can you expect ? Love is love and you are beautiful, 
my dear.” 

Shadd, who at his little table had his back turned, sat up 
suddenly and then stroked the black cat on his knee with 
the palm of his hand and snapped the edge of an ace 
with his fingernail. 

****** ** 

She came to Keats Shadd as he sat with his book 
alone in the long perspective of arbor at noon day. He 
must have seen as she approached that there was some¬ 
thing of that which he had seen in her the first night 
she appeared in the circle of light by the parapet, some¬ 
thing of the child and something of the suggestion of 
straight upright bravery. Keats, she said, met her in a 
manner new to him. He stared at her as if she were a 


182 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

mere vision. Unlike Shadd, he stood aghast and hesi¬ 
tating. 

“There’s been a most awful row,” she announced. 

He did not speak. 

“I broke it,” she went on. “It was impossible! Don’t 
think it was all from what you said. That showed me. 
But it was in my heart all the time. The moment I re¬ 
fused him a caress he became-” 

She shuddered. 

Shadd put his long hands on her young shoulders. 

“And Mother has gone to Paris this morning, and she’s 
sent me back to Philadelphia with a Mrs. Kingsley. We’re 
sailing from here tonight. There was a cabin given up. 
Something of that kind.” 

Her eyes were looking straight into his—full, straight, 
searching. 

“I don’t want to go back,” she asserted. 

“And where-?” Shadd began. 

“With you,” she replied. “You love me. And I love 
you. The finest way. Forever.” 

Keats threw his head back, turning his face to the mot¬ 
tled sunlight from the vines above. She had seen on it 
all the yearning of this unretrieved soul; she saw his 
throat taut, heard unintelligible words addressed to the 
sky. For a moment he was like an animal in agony but 
when he looked back at her he was once more Keats 
Shadd. 

“You needn’t deny it,” she asserted passionately. “It’s 
not long acquaintance which makes love. We both know. 
We knew from the first. Don’t deny it. You love me. 
And I love you. We’ve said it without words a hundred 
times—all of it. We can go away together. We are both 
free. I have money—my own, own money. We can go 




Keats Shadd 183 

to America or Timbuctoo—anywhere. Why don’t you 
speak?” 

He bore down heavily with his hands upon the shoul¬ 
ders of her gray travelling dress. 

“I know,” she exclaimed. “Twice there has been the 
touch of your hand. You think I am young. I can give 
you everything.” 

There was near at hand the straight trunk of an old, 
old cypress tree pointing to the sky; he led her there and 
held her against its stability. 

“If you love me listen to me,” he said. “Somewhere 
there is young rich producing life for you. Some man— 
younger than I—some man more useful than I—some 
man with untarnished spirit and more simple and clean 
than I—will want you and will have you and you will 
have him. Though he never sees me I will be his 
friend.” 

He wet his lips. 

“What a glorious prospect! Do not hurry, dear one. 
Let all the wounds heal. Always be yourself and when 
the time comes give yourself for we all are meant to be 
given to the right and eternal causes. It will be worth 
nothing if it is only a mating of bodies. It will be worth 
nothing if it is only a mating of companionship. It will 
be another kind, something finer, something higher— 
without a name. But you, dear, will know it. You will 
know when it comes.” 

She was still looking squarely into his eyes. 

“But you love me?” she whispered. 

“It will not die,” he said. “This is my chance. I have 
found it at last. I will live in you and your children and 
their children.” 

Suddenly he became almost jovial. He pulled her to- 


184 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

ward the path. “You’re young,” he said. “You’re still 
untouched by life. Go forward, Francesca. Go on and 
on and on. No one yet knows as I know how far you can 
go. You’ve said we are to go away together. It is true. 
Though you go alone you will take me with you.” 

She put her hands over her eyes; he took one of them 
and pressed it to his lips. 

“Good-bye, dear one.” 

“Good-bye.” 

The sunset still warmed the line of western horizon 
and Keats Shadd leaned forward with trunk and elbows 
resting on the rough top of the parapet wall. There, 
between the tops of two battalions of cypress trees and 
across the garden walls and beyond the city which still 
exhaled the breath of the day’s heat he was watching the 
harbor’s edge. 

A liner moved slowly away from the dock beyond the 
long roof of the warehouses. One could see a puff of 
white steam. Several seconds later the sound of the 
liner’s baritone came drifting up on a lazy wind. 

Shadd watched the liner go up the long incline toward 
the horizon, until the dark had settled down and only the 
lights of that climbing vessel were visible. 

He turned quietly and in his face there was something 
wholly new. 

“Well,” said he, “what about a little game tonight?” 


THE PLAYTHINGS 


Believe or not, as you may, in premonitions—reject 
or not, as you wish, the value of forebodings—it was 
none the less true that Captain Philip Michael Harrower, 
gazing out the window of the Myddleton Mines Company, 
Limited, on the twenty-first floqr of the Wentwater Build¬ 
ing, felt the presence of impending evil. It was as if 
death hovered near. 

Not the shadow of possibility existed for the theory 
that this keen sense of threatening danger arose from 
something he had eaten; Captain Harrower, who had 
acquired his title in the militia many years before and 
looked unlike a military man, had so settled into the 
routine of life that rice, nuts and milk were his daily 
noontime diet. And yet, as the captain, a man who had 
willfully banished youth for a dignified bachelorhood, 
stood looking out over the expanse of lower New York 
and its harbor and the smoky horizon beyond, all of which 
was now turning from gray to a wall of black, filled with 
winking lights in the winter dusk, he had a definite feeling 
of excitement sweep over his body and an inexplicable 
shudder of terror seize upon his dulled nerves. 

“Miss Erskine!” he said, looking back into the office. 

A tall woman clinging to the last years of girlhood, 
was seated at a stenographer’s table at the other wall, in 
which position, for fifteen years—first in the old Lowrey 
Block and then in this monarch of office structures—she 
and the captain, sitting back to back, had transacted the 
American business of the rich Liverpool syndicate. She 
185 


186 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

raised her slender fingers from the keys when Harrower 
spoke to her and turned toward him an oval face, which 
showed refinement of breeding, sternness acquired in 
progress toward ancient virginity, a smooth, firm skin, 
lips thin but curved, a strange wistfulness combined \^ith 
a businesslike denunciation of frivolity. 

“Well, what is it?” she asked with a mild expression 
of well-seasoned hate shining from her brown eyes. 

The captain drew himself up with a sneer of contempt 
so delicate that it was polite and asked: 

“Is it cold in this office ?” 

“It is stifling hot, Captain Harrower!” replied Miss 
Harriet Erskine with disdain. 

They disliked each other. ,When he was thirty and she 
twenty-six he had engaged her. He remembered once in 
a while that the first day she was in the office he had 
noted—as he might have expected, because she came from 
good, sensible people—that she used no perfume. In¬ 
stead, when she bent near him that day he had sensed the 

rare, clean, wholesome, yet intoxicating aroma which- 

But that was years ago—confound it! 

Now, and for some years, the captain had lived at the 
Millennium Club, and with the club itself had grown 
silent, sour and satisfied. Once the wits of the city gath¬ 
ered round the yawning hearth—actors, artists, lawyers, 
idlers, doctors with a taste for banter, merchants with a 
hunger for relaxation; today the Millennium welcomes 
stupid old professors, librarians who enjoy a glass of 
vermouth and detest conversation, retired naval officers 
with the gout, bankers with the mulligrubs, publishers 
who talk shop, and gray-haired critics who wipe the 
beauty off each new painting, dull the edge of each new 
idea in the drama and denounce experiments in litera¬ 
ture, Each day in this club Harrower took a cold shower- 



The Playthings 187 

bath and ate his breakfast in a back window, where the 
sunlight fell upon his white tablecloth. Each v/eekday he 
then went to his office, where he arrived at ten, pretended 
to earn his eternal competence of ten thousand a year, 
watched Miss Erskine—who might have done all the work 
without him, so good was her judgment in American 
finance—smoked a pipe which always made her manu¬ 
facture a coughing fit; and then at, four, if it was summer, 
went to the Braleys’ to play a game of tennis—or, if it 
was winter, at five he called a public conveyance and was 
taken to visit the musty aristocratic families whose daugh¬ 
ters he had not married. 

He hated the idea of marriage. The women who still 
eyed him as if they thought him distinguished looking, if 
not handsome, frightened him. God forbid! How he 
would miss the musty smell at the club! He had learned 
to regard the possibility that any woman should claim a 
right to throw her arms about his neck as a horrid imagi¬ 
native condition, as a child sometimes conjures up will¬ 
fully the fancy of being bitten by an ogre. Out upon it! 
He was rich, comfortable, lived frugally, thought upon a 
high plane, regretted nothing, had no desire to shake dice 
with Fate. It sometimes occurred to him that if Harriet 
Erskine should die he would miss her sorely. He would 
suffer a strange grief for her who had been so long an 
object of indifference, when she was not the subject of 
peevish annoyance. He could be grateful for one thing— 
she hated him. When Harrower was sitting with his 
straight back not four inches from hers he could some¬ 
times feel the repulsion, as between two negatively charged 
bodies that fly apart in a lesson in physics. 

He knew what she thought of him ; he had absorbed 
her notions in the course of the fifteen years without a 
word being said. He knew that if a cold kept him away 


188 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

from the office she, who never had a day of illness in her 
life and sneered at those who had, would be as restless 
as a fly in a bottle until she knew it was nothing serious. 
He knew that she knew she was worth more than twenty- 
five dollars a week, but for years he had not given her 
more—first, because she believed that both of them should 
be drawing at least the same salary; and second, because 
she never would stoop to ask him for anything. He knew 
that she belonged to the board of trustees of the Martha 
Oates Settlement House; that she lived in a room which 
overlooked Gramercy Park; that there was a Bible and a 
Percy Shelley on her table, and pictures of round-cheeked 
nephews and nieces on her bureau, together with an array 
of useless Christmas knick-knacks preserved in memory of 
the once-a-year recognition of her existence. He knew 
she belonged—how far out of perspective!—to a basket¬ 
ball class at the Woman's League Gymnasium. He knew 
she went to see problem plays—on the sly. He knew 
that she considered him, and other men, too, selfish, de¬ 
ceptive, given to faults such as smoking a pipe with brown 
mud in the bowl, and still harboring the terrible notion 
of savages that woman was a chattel to be seized and 
appropriated, and still believed—worst of all—that woman 
liked it! 

He reviewed these matters as he looked out at the gath¬ 
ering storm-clouds on this Saturday night, because the 
sense of hovering danger made him think of the possi¬ 
bility that some hand of Fate, swift and sure, was about 
to snatch him away from this office forever. 

Harrower was glad they had stayed so late, so that 
when she had finished the letters he could sign them, and 
the correspondence, including that concerning sales of 
the last steamerload of ore, would be cleaned up in case 
anything should happen. 


189 


The Playthings 

“How many more?” he asked peevishly. 

“Not very many, Mr. Harrower,” Miss Erskine 
snapped. “I’ve had interruptions or I should have finished 
before this. I don’t like to ask you, but will you turn 
on the light?” 

“Umph!” said Harrower. 

A moment later he disengaged his fingers from the cur¬ 
tain cord and interrupted again. 

“How many stories has this building?” Harriet gave 
him a look. “Well, I know,” said he; “but we’re right 
under the roof, aren’t we ? Do you know, I never thought 
of that! I’ve never been up there.” 

Miss Erskine, for answer, literally banged out the 
words, “Y-o-u-r s-h-i-p-m-e-n-t,” and ended with a period 
that was a metaphorical slap in the face. 

The captain scowled, took his overcoat down from the 
stand, being careful not so much as to touch the sleeve 
of her jacket—or whatever the thing is called—which 
hung beside it, put it on, clapped his hat on his head and 
strode out of the office. He expected she would ask 
whether he was going home, but she did not even look 
round. She had too much sense! 

The rest of the offices on the floor were already dark. 
Some one had turned out the lights in the resounding 
corridor. The gentle hum of one elevator sounded fainter 
as the car dropped down the deep pit toward the street. 
Harrower felt his way along the wall to the iron stairs 
that ran upward. The first flight led to an entrance to 
the machinery, the pulley wheels, the jumping blue sparks 
and the smell of oil at the top of the elevator shaft; the 
second flight ended in a heavy, padded, steel-incased door. 
Here the captain’s progress was delayed until, feeling 
round over its surface, he found a knob that turned 
against the pressure of a spring; and then with his knee 


190 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

he pushed the door open until it lay flat against the wall, 
and stepped out into the sweep of the raw wind. 

The unobstructed view in all directions not only had 
the sense of height that could be obtained by gazing from 
the office windows but it had also the wide-flung breadth 
that made Harrower gasp. 

“Magnificent. Magnificent!” said he, pulling on his 
gloves and rubbing their palms together with satisfac¬ 
tion. The roof had a flat expanse of more than an acre; 
and, like an acre in the country, it was walled round with 
an architectural parapet three feet high in place of a 
rougher inclosure. 

“A man might build a summer residence here,” said 
he; “have a garden, an orchard, keep a cow, lay out a 
tennis court, take a stroll in the evening, return home to 
a night’s rest guided by the lights in the parlor win¬ 
dow. And what a view!” 

So much sky, it seemed to him, he had never noticed 
before. The city, stretching miles northward to the hori¬ 
zon and spilling over two rivers—to west and east—and 
the harbor, sprawled out like a gray drop of hot lead 
on a floor, were only a poor quarter of the universe. The 
sky was an ample cover, a great inverted bowl, behind 
which other inverted bowls, nested one over the other, 
went on to infinity. One part of this bowl had a touch 
of pink from the sunset, the other was filled with the 
haze of the lighted city, which is ever a sort of red steam, 
rising from Babylon and Nineveh. In the east the sky 
was a non-committal gray, a blanket spread over the mys¬ 
terious sea. In still another quarter great black streaks 
of wind-racked clouds were whipped across the impen¬ 
etrable space. 

“Fine!” said the captain, filling his lungs with the 


The Playthings 191 

sharp air. His feeling of apprehension served him badly. 
It deserted him and left him free to walk briskly over the 
graveled roof, unafraid of falling through skylights, for 
there were none; unafraid of running into the great, 
round, black steel chimney, because he had located that 
while there was plenty of light to see. 

The time, perhaps, passed faster than he thought. Once 
his nervous memory plucked his sleeve; but it was not 
until he heard Miss Erskine’s voice calling his name that 
he turned toward the door leading down to the inside 
of the great building. 

She had put on her coat and hat and was standing 
there—a stern figure of reproof. 

“I knew you were up here,” she called. “I was afraid 
something had happened.” 

She was evidently satirical, because she gazed upward 
at the weather as she said the words. The captain was 
furious, and when he was furious he took revenge on his 
secretary by showing authority. 

“Come here!” he beckoned. 

Harriet cast a nervous look down the stairs behind her 
and then pulled the door into a position where she could 
shut it. Nothing could have been more plain than that 
she doubted the propriety of being alone on the roof of 
the Wentwater Building with a bachelor, and by no chance 
wished to be seen in such embarassment. 

“Don’t!” bellowed the captain. “Don’t, I say! Don’t 
shut it! A thousand devils!” 

Miss Erskine had stepped out on to the roof and had 
closed the steel door behind her with a malicious click. 

Harrower rushed toward her. 

“Did you put out the lights in our office?” he cried. 
“Come, come! Speak!” 


192 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Certainly I did!” replied Harriet chillingly. “I never 
waste current when I can help it. The letters are on 
your desk waiting tq be signed. What’s the matter ?” 

The captain had struck a match. He was inspecting 
the outer surface of the heavy door; and then, as if he 
could not believe his eyes, he felt the same field over with 
the tips of his fingers. 

“Fools r 

“They left no latch on this side,” said Harriet with her 
admirable sense. “We are locked out! We shall have to 
pound. They will come. I shall be ridiculous! It will 
be your fault!” 

“If you had left our office lights burning they would 
have searched for us.” 

“I prefer to be in the position of being trapped here 
and trying to get out,” said Harriet, her brown eyes 
snapping fire. “I do not wish merely to be found 
here!” 

Harrower began to beat upon the upholstered steel with 
his gloved fist. The hinges and lock were both firm, rest¬ 
ing tight against the concrete superstructure that covered 
the stairs. The door did not rattle as he pounded; his 
violence resulted merely in a succession of dull thuds, 
which did not seem to penetrate, but went off into the 
air from the outside of the door. 

“There is a skylight?” suggested the woman. 

“There is no skylight!” he replied with a wry face. 
“And I have a dinner engagement at the Marburys’. It is 
vexing. I told you not to shut it.” 

Miss Erskine gazed out at the sweep of horizon and 
smiled grimly to hide the nervousness that she felt might 
have showed on her face. Then suddenly she took her 
turn at the door, kicking at it in a businesslike way with 
the heel of her small shoes. Harrower was forced to smile 


The Playthings 193 

at the triviality of the result. A streak of biting wind 
swept on the mat at that moment, rushed up one sleeve of 
his overcoat and turned Miss Erskine’s hat over one ear, 
in the playful manner of a giant teasing a pair of mice. 
The two waited, but no one came to unfasten the door.. 
Scratching a match against the unyielding concrete, the 
captain tried to inspect the edge of the door, in the vain 
hope that he could find some hinge to be unscrewed or 
pried off; but the match was blown out with the same 
startling suddenness with which it had leaped into flame, 
and his groping hand found that the door was set into its 
frame, flush with the walls. 

“Save your matches!” commanded the secretary 
severely. 

Her words sounded like the caution of one lost in the 
wilderness and brought a terrifying realization to Har- 
rower. He fell upon the door and kicked and beat upon 
it until he was out of breath. 

“What will Mrs. Carter think of me!” exclaimed Har¬ 
riet woefully. “I’m always so regular at meals and so 
prompt!” 

“Pah!” said the captain, and looked at his watch. It 
was already within a minute of six. The dark had settled 
over the world, stretched taut round them; the streaks of 
clouds had been but the fringe of a black blanket, which 
now covered more than half the sky. Evidently it was 
growing thick in the harbor: the bellow of steam whistles 
—distant, trembling faintly—had increased in frequency. 
A haze apparently had settled on the North River, be¬ 
cause the lights on the Jersey City and Hoboken shores 
were barely visible and the moving glow from ferry boats 
had become blurred. Up from the street, in lulls of the 
wind, came the whisper of traffic—Harrower stood listen¬ 
ing to the mumble of the city. 


194 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Well, what are we going to do?” asked Miss Erskine, 
buttoning her collar about her round, velvety neck. 

The captain looked at her, turned once more, beat upon 
the door until his knuckles and toes ached, shrugged his 
shoulders and sniffed the air. 

“It’s growing colder every moment,” said he. “We'd 
better walk.” 

Miss Erskine assumed that he intended they should 
walk together, because she took her place by his side as 
they started and continued with him on a silent patrol 
round the edges of the parapet. It was not until, covering 
their acre of ground, they had reached the back of the 
building, which looks toward the wholesale and warehouse 
district, that they found the parapet was not built on that 
side. The stones of the cornice rose a little above the 
level of the tar-and-gravel roof, but beyond it space 
yawned—ugly, uninterrupted space—horrible, fascinating 
space, almost seeming to possess a luring voice—a threat 
of destruction! 

Harrower put his hand and arm in front of the secre¬ 
tary as if to prevent her being swept into the chasm by 
the same gusts of wind that had already blown long 
strands of her hair out from under her hat; instinctively 
Miss Erskine caught at his sleeve with both her hands. 

“I think we ought to go back and beat on the door some 
more,” she said quietly. 

“You’re not getting cold?” he asked with apprehen¬ 
sion. 

She smiled. Her face was near enough for him to sec 
it. “It’s rather serious, isn't it?” 

Harrower filled his lungs before he spoke. 

“Yes,” said he; “I have been weighing the matter. 
Pounding on that door is about as effective as stamping 
on this gravel. Even the scrubwomen, when they come, 


The Playthings 195 

won’t hear us. It is growing colder. You must not lose 
your composure.” 

“Have I ?” she snapped; and as he did not answer she 
followed him to the edge of the parapet again, and the 
two stood side by side, bending their heads against the 
blast, their eyes watering because of its sting. 

Through the blur of their vision they could see that 
the window lights in other skyscrapers—rising from the 
neatly rectangular patterns of the lower city—were dis¬ 
appearing. Several large buildings were wholly dark, 
like solid black monoliths, which gave emphasis to one 
lighted window across a field of space. A tiny figure 
moved there—a black speck behind the glass. Harrower 
threw back his head. 

“Hello there! Hey! Hello-o-o!” 

The shout seemed to have a flimsy material existence 
like a piece of paper, and like a piece of paper the wind 
seemed to take it and toss it upward over the roof, whirl 
it round, tear it into shreds and scatter it to oblivion. 

Harriet touched his arm again timidly. 

“Don’t!” said she. “You might as well stand alone 
on a raft in the middle of the ocean and shout. It only 
makes me feel lonesome.” 

“Lonesome ?” 

“Yes, lonesome,” she said tartly—“and hungry!” 

At the sound* of the word hungry the captain started 
out to walk briskly again as if he expected to find an 
all-night lunchroom on the roof. She ran along by his 
side, for the moment in the attitude of a child who ex¬ 
pects assistance from some one stronger and wiser than 
himself; then she stopped, letting him go on alone and 
watching his figure grow shadowy as it receded into the 
swirl of wind and dark. 

“Come on!” he shouted back at her angrily. “I don’t 


196 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

want to leave you alone. It will be necessary to walk to 
keep warm.” 

“There are some nut9 downstairs in your desk,” said 
the secretary. 

“Umph! You hungry again?” he asked as if he had 
just treated her to a full meal. A howl of the wind, ris¬ 
ing into a shriek, descending into a grumble, drove the 
loose particles of gravel across the roof in exact imita¬ 
tion of the sound of water receding on a stony beach. It 
turned the edge of the sharp answer Miss Erskine had 
formed on her lip. She forgot absolutely what she had 
planned to say. 

The captain was imagining the flicker of flames on the 
hearth at the Millennium Club. He could see the pussy¬ 
foot waiter approach, amber liquid in a glass. He could 
feel the sensation of holding a piece of crisp French 
bread in one hand, while under pressure of his other 
fingers the glistening knife cut neatly into a,, little, white, 
velvet-surfaced pat of fresh butter. He could* hear the 
rustle of dry foliage of the Christmas wreaths hung over 
the caribou's antlers at the turn of the old stairs, and 
smell the musty odor of unused books in the club library, 
which seemed in some way to get into his clothes and 
appear at embarrassing moments when, starched and 
groomed and crackling with elegance, and puffing with 
that vanity of youth left to him, he sat in a box at the 
opera. He reflected that he might as well be in the 
interior of Siberia. New York was under his feet; it 
might as well have been built at the source of the Ama¬ 
zon! One stood in the midst of it and yet could not 
speak to it; one saw New York all about on every side, 
and yet New York, instead of being a city of over four 
million living human beings, might as well have been 
an empty mirage on the Sahara! 


The Playthings 197 

The red* steam that hung above the lighted city, holding 
here and there a pocket of white light, seemed suddenly 
to thicken and flatten and give way to a vertical wall of 
haze that moved down from the north like a comb. 

They had come to the door again, and Miss Erskine 
once more beat upon it until her breath came faster and 
faster, like a patient’s with a fever. The thud 9 were not 
loud. She stooped and tried to pick up some of the fine 
gravel, but it was imbedded fast in the cold tar, and the 
few fine grains she flung at the sheets of thin steel fell 
back with the sound of a mocking, snickering laugh. Her 
exertion had caused her exhalations to rush out into the 
frosty air in long streams of white, which were snatched 
away from her lips by the sweep of wind. The captain 
felt the warmth of her breath on the bridge of his nose 
and tried to wipe off- the sensation with the back of his 
glove, as if it were a crawling insect. 

After a time he stopped and felt of a comer of her 
coat with a thumb and forefinger. 

“It’s not very heavy material,” said he. 

“Not very,” she answered cheerfully. 

“My Lord! I must do something!” 

“What?” 

For answer he thought about it, slapping hi9 chilled 
fingers, and at last searched for the papers that he car¬ 
ried methodically, as he in his settled bachelor way did all 
things, in an inside pocket of his coat. He was so punc¬ 
tilious in answering all correspondence, and filing all im¬ 
portant papers and destroying all others, that now all he 
could find was an invitation to a wedding of the daughter 
of a college classmate. He tore the stiff double sheet in 
two, quartered it; then he found four pebbles, about 
which he wrapped the pieces of paper. 

“Messages?” asked Harriet. 


198 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Yes,” said he; and, affected by the habit of fifteen 
years, he turned to Miss Erskine with the same signal of 
an uplifted forefinger by which she always understood 
that he wanted to give her stenographic dictation. 
Thereupon both laughed in a half-frightened tone, and 
he wrote in pencil on each of the four little squares. As 
he wrote his memory recalled his feeling of apprehen¬ 
sion of death. It did not seem so mysterious now. 

His fingers, however, trembled more from the cold and 
nervous tension than from fear as, blindly in the dark, 
he scrawled the words. 

At the middle of the front of the building the parapet 
bowed out, so that the roof, for the space of a rod, ex¬ 
tended to the face of the vertical wall. To this spot, with 
Miss Erskine clinging to his arm so that she might not 
become separated from him, the captain made his cautious 
way, and together the twa looked over- the edge. 

The mere downward stretch of the structure's walls was 
sickening. The solid, flat expanse of brick seemed to 
lean out at the top where they stood, as if the wind that 
shrieked about their aching ears and streaming eyes had 
bent the towering building perilously over the street. 
In the snapping white glow from pinpoint lights down 
there little human beings moved and vehicles slid along 
like colonies of disease germs seen under the microscope. 

“People!” said Harriet, as the captain dropped his 
weighted messages over the edge. 

“Look!” said he. “How the wind takes these! Watch 
where they go!” 

Miss Erskine did her best; but the four little* white 
spots grew smaller and smaller—they had not fallen four 
stories before they faded away, apparently dissolved in 
the air. 

“No one will pay any attention to them!” Harrower 


The Playthings 199 

exclaimed gloomily. “And some of those people down 
there have been out to dinner and are going to the the¬ 
ater! They are all thinking of themselves. Hello! 
Hello-o-o! You see! They might as well be in London.” 

“Or we in Labrador,” she suggested. 

Then each of them looked into the other’s face and, 
without uttering a word, admitted the full measure of 
their- danger. 

“We have no water!” 

“No food!” 

“No fire!” 

“Perhaps/” said Miss Erskine sweetly, “it may be 
Monday before any one comes! I suppose there is some 
danger of—well, of-” 

“Would you put on my overcoat for a while?” the cap¬ 
tain interrupted. 

“Oh, no; I am quite warm,” she replied, and her teeth 
clicked as she spoke. 

“It’s awfully decent of you to be brave,” said he, trying 
to see the expression of her face. “Of course explorers 
and people like that are hardened—they’re prepared in a 
way; but this,” he concluded, indicating the map of the 
city with a sweep of his arm, “this is the middle of civil¬ 
ization, with all its manners and customs. We have just 
stepped out of it, and it’s something of a shock! About 
myself I don’t care——” 

“Well, no one is dependent on either of us!” cried Miss 
Erskine testily. “Why do we talk? We ought not to 
talk about it any more.” 

“I will try the door again,” said he. “Stay here. I 
will come back.” 

For a period of uncertain time, which seemed an hour, 
she heard his blows faintly. They were delivered in peri¬ 
odic storms and in the intermittent spaces she found her- 



200 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

self thinking that, after all, what she had said was true. 
Certainly no one was dependent upon her! She ought 
to be glad that this was so, in case she were found later 
lifeless on that gravel roof; but, in fact, at this very 
moment, and with danger at hand, she was sorry. To 
leave life and leave nothing personal behind is oblivion. 
That is why God invented children—and man, stained- 
glass windows. 

Harrower returned. 

“No one came,” he announced. 

“That vertical wall of haze we saw uptown is nearer 
now,” said she. 

The captain squared his shoulders as if to make him¬ 
self broader and stood in front of her, a screen against 
the wind. Suddenly he raised his coatsleeve near to his 
eyes. 

“The Metropolitan Tower is out of sight,” Harriet 
said. “Something is gathering round us. It’s just like 
being shut in. What are you looking at?” 

“Snow!” he whispered. “Can’t you see? It’s all 
about us. Snow!” 

“You are frightened?” 

“No,” said he. “I was just thinking how the shovels 
would sound scraping over the bricks on Sunday morn¬ 
ing. There will be blinding light and the sound of the 
church bells coming in through my open window.” 

“Do you lie abed Sunday mornings?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

“So do I.” 

“You’re shuddering,” charged Harrower. 

“So are you. It’s the wind.” 

“I’m not shuddering,” lied Harrower; and wondering 
at himself he pulled off his coat. “Put this on,” he com¬ 
manded. “I’m going to take a little run.” 


The Playthings 


201 


“Don’t!” 

“You’re not afraid to stay alone a moment?” 

“No. But it’s the coat—I don’t want it. I’m not cold 
at all.” 

He spoke with the authority of the primitive male. 

“Put it on! Do you hear? I said put on that coat!” 

A curious, pleased little smile came into her face and 
she obeyed. The captain felt a new experience in ex¬ 
hilaration because she had yielded. 

“Don’t go far!” she called out after him. “Be careful!” 

He came back panting. 

“Whatever we do we must not go to sleep,” she said. 
“I’ve read that. That is the treachery of a cold and heavy 
snow like this. Men lost in the North—on deserts like 
this roof—die that way.” 

“See here!” said he. “Give up that idea. I will not 
let you die. Depend on that! No, sir! I will not let 
anything happen to you. I wouldn’t have anything hap¬ 
pen to you—I-” 

“Won’t it seem funny when you and I are back in the 
office ? Those two empty chairs—just below where we are 
standing now! Oh, it will never seem the same!” 

“What?” 

She did not answer. She took off his overcoat and 
held it for him to slip his arms in the holes. 

“Walk!” she exclaimed. 

So the two, side by side, set out for a patrol of the roof, 
which seemed interminable. After an hour she put her 
hand under his elbow timidly and they trudged on through 
the accumulating snow, which, even though sticky, had 
been blown into rifts and ridges on their acre of isola¬ 
tion. In lulls of the wind they could hear it squeak under 
foot. Occasionally, when they passed the door, he 
stopped to beat upon it with his fists. At midnight he 


202 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

looked at her anxiously. Her face seemed as white as 
marble; her jaw was set; a calm, placid expression was 
in her widely opened eyes. She had the beauty of youth 
in the hour of death. He felt a terrible surge of wrath 
and fear. Silently he cursed the city and its people, the 
faint sound of active human life that drifted through 
the voices of the storm. To this man, seven hours be¬ 
fore a creature of civilization, came a rush of instincts, 
mowing down the whole harvest of settled habits of 
thought and action. The man who was American man¬ 
ager for the Myddletons was a masquerader; the man 
on the roof, putting his wits in opposition to the ele¬ 
ments, was a savage. He threw one arm about the sec¬ 
retary’s shoulder and turned her about in its curve until 
she was looking up at him. She was no longer a secre¬ 
tary; she was just a woman. She might have been one 
found by a mammoth-hunter in a snowstorm, to save 
whom the barbarian would tear his own ligaments, be¬ 
cause she pleased him. 

“What’s the matter?” said the captain between closed 
teeth. 

She tried to push away from him; and then, giving 
it up, struggled to smile. She had had no lunch on Sat¬ 
urday. Nearly twenty-four hours had gone since she 
had eaten heartily. 

“I’m so sleepy,” she said faintly. “The cold’s pain¬ 
ful. And I was thinking—thinking of a plate of griddle 
cakes and of maple syrup in a silver jug.” 

Harrower saw that her head rolled a little as she leaned 
back against his shoulder. He gave a hoarse cry and 
folded his arms about her, as he would have shielded a 
child from some personal attack. 

Indeed the storm seemed to have a personality. For 


The Playthings 203 

the first time he felt opposed to it—wit against wit, 
strength against strength, elementary man against the 
elements. He lowered Miss Erskine into the snowdrift, 
so that her back leaned against the parapet. She opened 
her eyes slowly. 

“Oh, it’s you!” she said contentedly. “Don’t worry 
about me. I’m all right.” 

He straightened his aching body, looked up at the sky, 
biting the backs of his gloved fingers. The snow! The 
cold! The wind! The wind was the worst! If only 
he could find for her shelter from the wind. 

“There is a place on my arm that’s so funny!” Har¬ 
riet said sleepily. “It burns so!” 

The captain made no reply. An extraordinary mem¬ 
ory had come back to him, a picture in a book he had 
owned when a child—a picture of some explorer of the 
Northwest Passage, squatting cross-legged and looking 
up at an Eskimo; a picture the background of which was 
occupied by the walls and rounded roof of an ice hut! 
Falling on his knees in the sticky snow he rolled a handful 
into a ball. He turned it this way and that as it increased; 
he rose and kicked it forward with his foot until it 
had become eighteen inches in diameter. He began 
another. Then stopping his work, he ran back ,to the 
woman. 

He shook her into sensibility. 

“Wake up! Wake up!” he roared. “I’m building us 
a house!” 

She rubbed her eyes. 

“A house for us?” 

“Yes. A warm house! You mustn’t sleep! Come, 
girl! You mustn’t sleep. You must work. You must 
keep awake! Come! Look! Make these big snowballs.” 


204 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

She gave him no answer, but gritted her teeth as she 
crawled forward to her task. He saw that she under¬ 
stood, was brave, was willing to help; he was satisfied. 
They labored on without a word. A wall three feet high 
was done before they had finished the next; the wind, to 
Harrower’s satisfaction, had heaped a great drift of 
white against the northern side of the structure. Once 
Miss Erskin stopped, folded her hands and gazed at 
Harrower, who had come near her, with such an expres¬ 
sion of wonderment and admiration that he could not real¬ 
ize she was a woman instead of a little girl; then she 
stretched herself very comfortably out on the snow and 
immediately slept. He shook her again, stood her on her 
feet and forced her back to the task. 

At last it was done! He had forgotten the city now. 
In the wilderness of the storm he had built a shelter for 
the woman, and with aching lungs, muscles and skin 
numbed by the cold, staggering with hunger and fatigue, 
he reached round in the dark until he had laid hands 
upon her; and, as if she had been a sick sledgedog and 
he an Eskimo, he dragged her through the narrow open- 
ing and packed the hole from the inside with his bare 
hands. 

This was magic! The storm, so far as its presence 
could be felt, might now have been on another hemisphere. 
Not a sound penetrated the snow walls! Not a breath of 
the blast outside disturbed the interior! A vault of ma¬ 
sonry, with walls eight feet thick, could not have ex¬ 
cluded the rage of a blizzard better. Suddenly he heard 
the violent ticking of his watch; then, with the same sud¬ 
denness, out of the silence came the comforting sound 
of the woman’s rhythmic breathing. He was conscious, 
too, of an immediate relief from the sting of the bitter 
cold and of a leap of triumph in the beating of his own 


The Playthings 205 

heart. He even began to wonder what the temperature 
might be inside this shelter. 

“I suppose I must still keep awake?” came the voice 
of Harriet out of the velvet dark. 

“Yes; it is best,” he answered without knowing 
whether he wa9 right or wrong. “It will soon be day.” 

Something came creeping toward him over the floor, 
found his hand and moved timidly within it. It was 
her own. 

“I am frightened,” she said. “You know—just a fool¬ 
ish sort of fright.” 

“Exactly!” said he approvingly. 

After a long time he moved a little. 

“I am awake,” said she proudly. 

“I was remembering your remark about how strange 
it will be to go back to the office.” 

“It should not be—after so many years.” 

“Yes, I know. You are quite right.” 

He fell to wondering whether she still retained that 
horrible and delicate deathlike beauty he had seen the 
night before as he had bent down close to her. 

“I am about to light a match,” said he. “Don’t be 
startled. There!” 

The flame burned steadily down the little stick while 
with blinking eyes the captain pretended to look about 
the walls. Once he cast a covert glance at her hand rest¬ 
ing in his, but he returned his vision continually to her 
face. It still wore the look of physical agony, drawn 
with hunger and thirst; and at the corner of her mouth 
a little red drop of blood stood vividly against the white 
skin. The match went out. 

“You have been eating snow!” he said sternly. “It will 
only make you more thirsty. You must not do it.” 

“I won’t!” said she obediently, moving her body. “Per- 


206 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

haps we will have a long siege—all of today and another 
night!” 

Harrower uttered an involuntary groan. He never 
knew that women could be so game; he wondered how 
a man could sit with his back three or four inches from 
a woman’s back for fifteen years and be so insensible 
and so insensate! 

“It is growing light,” said her voice. “This snow is 
like frosted glass. No—it’s different. Light seems to 
saturate it—it’s a white glow.” 

He tightened his fingers about her hand. But she was 
right; the day had come. Little by little the white suf¬ 
fused radiance lit up the interior of the snow hut. 

“Well, yesterday at this time we were just regular 
people,” said Harrower as if he had been thinking deeply. 
“Why, I was fussy about a hole in the corner of a napkin i 

Now I could eat that napkin—hole and all! We were- 

Well, what’s the use ? The door shut and the lock clicked! 
Then it was life and death. The bark was stripped off 
me. I know that. Everything goes, then, but the hard, 
cold, naked truths about ourselves. We become the play¬ 
things of the gods! What’s the matter ?” 

“Nothing.” 

“My dear girl, I saw you wince as if you were in 
agony.” 

“My arm!” 

“What about it?” 

“It’s nothing! I think—last night; you know- Oh, 

don’t bother! I think—up here by the shoulder—it’s 
frozen; you know—just a little bit!” 

The captain scowled. 

“It should be rubbed with snow,” he announced at 
last. 

“My sleeve!” 




207 


The Playthings 

“Yes, that prevents.” 

“Have you that little pearl knife ?” 

“Oh—I see!” 

She drew her arms out of both coatsleeves, trying to 
hide the twists of pain that insisted upon making them¬ 
selves known at the corners of her mouth; the silk sleeve 
she pulled taut. “Cut it!” 

Harrower inserted the point of the tiny penknife; its 
edge ran up the fabric with delicious ease and a satisfy¬ 
ing hissing sound. Then with her left hand Miss Er- 
skine drew the split sleeve away and pointed to a dull 
white area above her elbow. 

“It hurts!” she said. 

He stared in wonder at this arm. The hand of it now 
rested on the edge of the sole of one of his shoes. It was 
not the arm of an old maid; it was the arm of a girl. 
It was round and molded in the fullness of health and 
youth. It symbolized not yesterday but tomorrow! It 
had the refinement of the limbs of all creatures of fine 
breeding; it had the grace of living, active, sentient things. 
It was white with chaste retirement; it was warm beneath 
with the mischief of coursing blood. The hollow at the 
elbow was almost imperceptible—a place where faint 
blue veins were covered with a velvety skin—a detail of 
beauty suggestive of the kindness of Nature and the 
purposes of the universe. Instead of rubbing this arm 
with snow, Harrower would have preferred to have taken 
off his hat to it! 

He did not flinch however. With her eyes upon him, 
expressing to him her gratitude and moving upward as 
the pain became hard to bear, the captain proceeded duti¬ 
fully with the treatment. 

“Your hands—themselves—are—like—ice,” she said in 
a faint, broken voice. 


208 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

He looked up quickly—just in time to see that she 
was losing consciousness. 

“Good Heavens!’ he exclaimed. “I had forgotten. I 
must do something! No food! No water! Trapped 
like rats!” 

He wrapped the coats about her and kicked open the 
entrance of the snow hut. The brilliant sunlight poked 
in a round shaft, the end of which rested on Miss Er- 
skine’s upturned face. The captain crawled through the 
hole in the opposite direction and, standing up, found 
himself knee-deep in a drift of snow, the top of which 
was of feathery lightness and bore upon its undulating 
surface his grotesque shadow, the color of heliotrope. 
The immense inverted bowl of sky was now a cloudless 
concave of delicate blue; the world below, the roof, the 
city, the New Jersey hills, the tops of buildings, City Hall 
Park, the bridges hung over the pale water of the East 
River, the expanse of Brooklyn, Staten Island beyond 
the flashing water-mirror of the harbor—the whole flat 
quarter of the universe was covered with dazzling white 
—a white brilliant enough to cause pain in the forehead! 

Harrower could hear church bells on the clear, bitter 
air; he fancied he could hear the scrape of snowshovels, 
which he always associated with Sunday mornings in 
winter. He drew in a long breath of the still cold, which 
was sharp enough to burn his nostrils; and walking to 
the parapet he gazed down at little black specks that 
moved over the white in the street. His watch told him 
it was nearly seven; remembrance of the passage of time 
brought a panic to his emotions. 

He looked uptown over the endless roof-tops until he 
had picked out with his one opened eye a building he 
believed to be the club itself. It seemed as if he might 
jump off this roof and land on that—it was so near. 


The Playthings 209 

Well, men lost in the wilderness sometimes put up some 
sort of flag; sometimes they built signal fires! Signal 
fires! 

He realized that he had no fuel to build signal fires; 
the roof had been bare. To make sure he walked round 
behind the concrete superstructure that covered the stairs. 
On the other side of it, almost touching it, stood a me¬ 
morial of last summer, mocking a hungry man—it was 
a round-topped table, with ornate wooden legs, such as 
is seen in a soda-water palace; and two chairs to match 
were drawn up, one on each side, as if inviting Harrower 
and Miss Erskine to sit down to a meal of snowballs. 
He gave a cry of rage and, seizing the table by one leg, 
beat it against the concrete wall until the splinters flew. 
With his hands and feet he fell upon it until it was a 
mass of kindling. 

In the snow at the front of the building he cleared 
a bare space, where he dumped his armful of broken 
wood; then, on his knees, he searched his pockets for 
paper. There was money, there were keys, a pocketknife, 
a tobacco pouch, his pipe, a matchsafe with four matches, 
a fountain pen, a pencil, a leathern wallet; but nowhere 
on the roof—and he thought over all possibilities twice— 
was there a scrap of paper! He opened his coat and 
waistcoat, and with clawing fingers tore out a wide strip 
from his linen shirt, which he thrust beneath his pile of 
wood and tried to light. The first match went out. The 
second started a little yellow flame in the linen; but it 
ended in a glow that ate its way here an there in the cloth, 
leaving a black line behind. Harrower whispered curses 
at the fabric; he would have sold his membership in the 
Millennium and his partnership with the Myddleton9 for 
half a handful of paper! 

Suddenly, however, he gave a glad shout, pulled out 


210 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

the leathern wallet, and with cracked, blood-stained 
fingers seized upon five yellow-and-green strips of paper. 
They were five twenty-dollar bills—all new, crisp, warm, 
dry—a Godsend! 

The third match seized upon this welcome prey for its 
little licking flame. Smoke crawled up through the 
kindling; little tongues of fire shot up through the splin¬ 
ters of wood. In the still air the flame rose straight 
toward the zenith of the blue sky and from the captain’s 
fire a finger of smoke climbed upward—undulating, 
wavering, regaining its course through the cold air. With 
the heat, the tar beneath the gravel melted and shimmered 
on its liquid surface. Harrower rubbed his hands over 
the blaze; then, filling his derby hat with snow he held 
it over the leaping heat until its contents had melted. 

‘‘See!” he exclaimed proudly as he crawled into the 
hut again and met the woman’s inquiring gaze. “I’ve built 
a signal fire! I’ve got water for you! It’s in my hat,” 
he added sheepishly. 

She put her curved lips to the brim and drank; then 
held it out to him with both her hands. 

“Now—you!” she said with an affectionate smile. 
“Your eyes look so dizzy.” 

“The smoke!” he explained untruthfully. 

“You hope some one will notice it?” 

“Yes.” 

“Smoke comes from the tops of all buildings, though, 
doesn’t it ?” she said weakly. 

He sprang up on to his hands and knees and crawled 
out, knocking down half the front of their house as he did 
so. To be sure! To be sure! Smoke columns rose from 
every rooftop! 

There was something else to be done, however; it 
came to the captain just as if some voice had whispered 


211 


The Playthings 

the suggestion in his burning ears. With a savage growl 
he ran toward his fire; picking a burning brand from 
it and heaving it over the parapet, he watched its descent 
into the street. One could drop messages on paper into 
that chasm all day long without attracting attention, but 
burning wood does not fall from the sky to the street 
unnoticed! He threw another and another; All were 
gone—burning sticks, pieces of glowing charcoal, flaming 
splinters—over the edge! 

The captain leaned with his hands on the parapet. Sev¬ 
eral little black specks had left the sidewalk and were 
running back and forth round a spot in the street. He 
heard shouts coming from below like feathers tossed up¬ 
ward by a playful breeze. Now and then these black 
specks—the tops of hats—would disappear and spots of 
color would take their places, the upturned faces of the 
tiny bystanders. Harrower waved to them. 

‘‘Hello!” he shouted. “Help! Help!” 

******** 

A little later Jerry Hennessey, at that time the janitor 
of the Wentwater Building, pushed open the door that 
led on to the roof. 

“Fire?” said he. “I don’t see no fire.” 

Nothing, in fact, appeared on the acre of snow but the 
two chairs and the criss-crossed tracks of a man’s feet. 
Jerry pushed his dusty hat on to the back of his head and 
scratched his hair with his nails as he followed this track 
round with his eyes. It zigzagged; it doubled; it spread 
out where a body had fallen; it went to the edge of the 
parapet; it returned to the two chairs tipped over in the 
drifts; it repeated itself; it wound uncertainly toward a 
pile of large snowballs in the middle of the roof, and 
there it stopped. With a grunt Hennessey stepped over 


212 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

the sill to make his way toward this shelter; he walked 
round it, rubbing the red bristles on his chin. 

“They said the building was on fire!” said he; and lean¬ 
ing down he peered into the interior of the snow hut. 

There, propped up against the shoulder of a kneeling 
man, he saw a girl whose face wore the beauty of one 
who has been near death, but has just been wakened from 
a long, wholesome sleep. She was gazing up at her com¬ 
panion with a little doubtful smile. 

“After all these years!” he heard her say. 

The man pressed her close to him. 

“I don’t care—it has been a revelation!” 

“You know me—better?” 

“No. It’s me! I know better!” 

“Kiss the old maid again, mister!” said she. 

The janitor saw their lips meet. 

“Here, there!” he said, recalling his duty and yet much 
embarrassed. “What’s going on here? This is agin 
the rules av the buildin’!” 

He did not know he had come across two playthings 
of the gods! 


THE THIRTY-THOUSAND-DOLLAR SLAP 


At nine o’clock in the evening February second, a tall, 
spare figure of a woman whose face was heavily veiled 
stalked into the vaulted and domed waiting room of the 
New Terminal Station. 

This woman carried in her hand a small leather bag 
apparently brand-new and also apparently the object of 
her nervous concern. The brass lock on the bag was 
sealed by a piece of steel wire, the two ends of which 
were fastened by a lozenge of pressed lead. 

The woman, having seated herself on one of the 
benches, felt the leather sides of the neat receptacle sev¬ 
eral times, as if she either wished to be sure that its 
contents were still intact or, not knowing what was in 
the bag, desired to determine what it contained. 

The hour was not a busy one for the great station, 
but nevertheless people of all types came and went con¬ 
tinually, some strolling lazily about as if time were 
passing painfully, others waiting as if to meet the 
other half of an appointment; and occasionally some 
brisk click-clack of running feet spoke of haste. Large 
railroad stations at all hours are places of both panting 
and sighs; in this one at the moment there was also 
the sound of a cleaner’s broom and the rattle of dish¬ 
washing reverberating from far away in the restaurant. 
Occasionally, too, there came the faint roar from the 
streets and with it the tail ends of drafts of the cold 
night outside. 

With one of these drafts arrived a spare and sinewy 
213 


214 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

young man who put forth a good first appearance in his 
dress, but who, a close observer would have remarked, 
was clothed for summer rather than for winter. He blew 
upon his cold, red fingers and, without showing any inter¬ 
est in his surroundings, slouched into a corner of a bench 
opposite the woman, stared up at the haze that seemed 
to sway in the station’s dome, and, stretching his arms, 
yawned audibly. 

No one—least of all, perhaps, the woman—would have 
suspected this bored newcomer of having any interest in 
anything particular in the whole waiting room. Yet 
when the telephonic contrivance on the wall had an¬ 
nounced “Train 49, local to the north, on track 32,” he 
must have noticed the almost imperceptible start in the 
woman’s angular body. He arose, yawned again, went to 
the ticket office and smiled through the polished brass 
grating at the half-automaton, half-human who frowned 
there. 

“Does 49 go as far as the capital?” he asked out of 
the side of his mouth. 

“Last stop,” sang the man. “Two eighty-five one 
way.” 

“I’ll try anything once,” the young man said, pushing 
his hat back on his head. “That’s me! Here’s the kale.” 

As he walked across the waiting room toward the big 
elevators he did not seem to be watching the woman 
with the locked and sealed bag, who walked before him; 
he even stopped to buy some chewing gum and a news¬ 
paper, as if he did not care very much whether he lost 
sight of her or not, and he even felt his chin to see 
whether he was in fit condition to make himself attractive 
to the feminine world. Yet it was a fact that he had 
first seen this particular woman and her mysterious bag 
long before she had reached the station. He had fol- 


The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 215 

lowed her, sticking closely to her trail. And, following, 
he had sensed a night of good luck. 

He was delighted to find that fortune stayed by him; 
the woman had not bought parlor-car accommodations. 
Therefore he could sit in a seat behind her and across 
the aisle, read up and down the sporting page with one 
eye, and with the other watch her every movement and 
reflect on and enjoy his catlike pursuit of quarry without 
any additional expense that might in the end be thrown 
away to no purpose. From his place of vantage, like a 
shadow that falls behind rather than before, he was in 
no danger of being observed; yet when the conductor 
had come through and tucked the woman’s ticket into the 
binding on the top of a plush seat he could see that his 
surmise that the woman was going to the last stop had 
been correct. 

“I have luck with women,” he said to himself, smiling 
at a newspaper cut of a beautiful dancer who had just 
declared for anti-vivisection. “Especially when I’m alone 
with ’em,” he added, looking about as if to count the 
five or six other passengers in the car. 

Though almost empty this interior was warm—so com¬ 
fortably and sleepily warm that, after a day spent in the 
cold wind, he wished that his business there did not make 
it necessary for him to sit up straight and resist the 
soporific effect of the rocking of the coach on its springs 
and the hum and click of the wheels on their tracks. 

The woman and her actions had begun to be an inter¬ 
esting study. With timid, covert motions she had drawn 
the fascinating sealed bag into her lap and again was 
feeling of its bright new leather sides. Once, without 
lifting her veil, she looked about as if she felt eyes fixed 
upon her, but all she saw of the observer was a wide¬ 
spread sheet of want advertisements, and she returned to 


216 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

her strange occupation of turning the bag round and 
round, studying its contour, testing its weight, inspect¬ 
ing its seams, trying to pry open a corner of its mouth 
to achieve a peek through a narrow crack. Whether or 
not she was doubtful of the safety of that which the bag 
contained, or was suffering from curiosity, doubly sharp 
because that of a woman, the young man could not de¬ 
termine. He found himself, none the less, as eager as she 
to have a single look within the leather receptacle. The 
leaden seal was not a usual decoration for a common¬ 
place bag carrying a change of clothes and a bottle of 
tooth-powder; small, new travelling bags were not ordi¬ 
narily the objects of so much care or curiosity. 

This reflection passed many times through the mind 
of the shrewd, crafty-faced young man, without leading 
to any firm conclusion as to the nature of what was hid¬ 
den within the mysterious satchel. He wished that he 
might for once see the woman’s countenance so that he 
could tell whether any emotion was written upon it, and 
perhaps read from an expression of fear or one of guilt 
an indication of what he desired to know. 

It was several minutes before she took from her purse 
a small jackknife and, believing herself unwatched, delib¬ 
erately began to rip the stitches in one of the bag’s corners. 
She worked with care, as if she planned to sew up the 
opening again and avoid detection when once her object 
had been satisfied. 

“She dresses pretty plain,” said the watcher to him¬ 
self. “I wish I could see her face.” 

It was not necessary, however, to see her expression 
to know, when she had made the aperture and had peeked 
into it with one eye, that she had been shocked by what 
she had seen. 


The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 217 

She dropped the bag as if it were red-hot. Her body 
stiffened. For several minutes she sat staring vacantly 
ahead of her, apparently trying to realize the truth of 
some awful thing upon which her peeking vision had 
rested. 

“I’d like to see her face!” whispered the other to him¬ 
self again. His palms felt the digging pressure of his 
nails. “I wonder what she saw. I’ll see this to the finish 
anyway!” 

The train rocked along. The woman folded her gloved 
hands and thrusc them forward on her knees, as one of 
her sex does when in distress of mind. She seemed to 
be fighting a battle with her judgment. Once she lifted 
the bag and looked within once more as if to be sure 
her eyes had not deceived her. Again she uttered a soft 
exclamation and then leaned back to stare at the ceiling 
of the car. At last she sat up and buttoned her raincoat. 
It gave the impression that she had made a decision. 

This impression was verified when at the first stop 
a brakeman opened the door and bawled through the rush 
of cold air and smoke that he allowed to enter, “Foxburg! 
Foxburg!” 

The woman arose at once. 

“She ain’t going up the state,” exclaimed her shadower 
under his breath. “I’ll take a chance on this.” 

He, too, got up and, brazenly whistling a popular mel¬ 
ody, slouched after the woman and found himself on the 
platform of the station, waiting to see what action she 
would take next. 

Foxburg, as all know, is a smoky but prosperous manu¬ 
facturing place not ten miles from the metropolis. Its 
hotels have not yet outgrown the custom of sending a 
bus and clamorous porters to the trains. 


218 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Imperial Hotel, ma’am,” called a hotel runner up. 

For a moment she appeared undecided; then, clasping 
the bag tightly, she stepped into the bus. 

“What sort of a shack have you got?” asked the young 
man in a loud voice. 

“It’s all right. If I said it wasn’t I’d lose my job,” said 
the Imperial representative. “Step in.” 

“I’ll try anything once,’ the young man answered. He 
had spoken with such well-simulated doubt that he had 
successfully concealed his desire to ride in that particular 
conveyance with its single feminine passenger. “Drive 
on. It’s beginning to snow.” 

The hotel was not far from the station. The woman, 
without lifting her veil, registered first. Her writing 
was not preceded by the slightest hesitancy and the man 
behind her believed she had inscribed her own name. 

“Miss Mary Inness,” read the clerk. “Front! Room 
42. See if those gas-fitters have cleaned up in the 
bath.” 

“Ice water,” said Miss Inness in a sweet but firm voice. 
“And are there telephones in the rooms?” 

“No,” answered the clerk. “You’ll have to come down 
and use that booth over by the cigar-case for long dis¬ 
tance.” 

“Room 42,” said the young man to himself, still 
slouching in the background. 

“Just the night?” asked the clerk after Miss Inness left. 

“Yep,” answered the other. 

“Front! 31. Two dollars, please.” 

“You win,” replied the guest, tossing over a bill. 
“What about fire-escapes?” 

“There’s one just outside your window, my friend,” 
answered the clerk, sticking the pen into the potato. 

The newcomer, who nodded, waited for the elevator, 


The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 219 

sharpening a match with a jackknife. He still whistled 
the popular melody. When he had reached his room and 
the boy had closed the door after him he quickly slipped 
off his shoes, kicked them under the bed, drew a little 
leather pouch filled with fine lead shot—which is com¬ 
monly called a life-preserver or blackjack or persuader— 
from his coat pocket, and, opening a hairwide crack in 
his door, listened for sounds in the hall. 

He did not have to wait long. After one hundred and 
twenty seconds, during which he puffed on a cigarette, 
his ears caught the sound of a door down the corridor. 
He heard the lock turned from the outside and the rustle 
of a woman’s dress going toward the stairs. 

“She wants to telephone,” he breathed softly. “I’m 
lucky with women!” 

A moment later he had crept down the hall as stealth¬ 
ily as a feline. The corridor was dimly lighted. He felt 
the raised numbers on a door or two until he was sure 
he had come to the right one. 

It did not yield to a cautious manipulation of its knob. 
He tried without result a key of his own that he carried 
as a convenience and that is known as a skeleton. 
Trained in quick observation and action, he glanced 
above him, saw a half-closed transom, looked up and 
down the hall, then, placing his fingers on the dusty 
ledge, drew himself up and peered through the opening. 

The room was lighted. The girl’s raincoat hung over 
a chair. Two hatpins stuck up in the pincushion on the 
bureau. The bag was not visible. 

Few men are as graceful in their motions as this one 
in reaching for the ledge, first with one stockinged foot 
and then with one knee, and drawing himself through 
the frame of the transom. Indeed the easy, noiseless in¬ 
vasion of this chamber was so well executed that even 


220 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

the man himself, standing on the floor inside, congrat¬ 
ulated himself on the perfection of the performance that 
had been accomplished without disturbing the adjust¬ 
able glass window or the rod that fastened it in place. 

He knew, however, that every watch-tick counted. He 
surveyed the room and noted five possible hiding- 
places for the bag—under the bed or bedding, in or 
under a bureau drawer, on top of the old-fashioned ward¬ 
robe, behind the tarnished radiator or in the closet. 
When he had finished his whirlwind search the closet 
door stood open, some of the bureau drawers were rest¬ 
ing on the floor, the bedding was thrown in a heap 
against the baseboard and he himself had just stepped 
into the bathroom. 

The bag itself was sitting there on the washstand! A 
piece of gaspipe left by the fitters was beside it. It sug¬ 
gested that the woman had thought of it as a possible 
weapon. 

There was no time for an inspection of the bag’s con¬ 
tents by peeking. He thrust his fingers through the 
opening that the woman had made and found them in 
contact with a folded piece of paper. This he drew forth. 

The bathroom was dark; he had brought no matches. 
Something was written on this sheet. With quick mo¬ 
tions he returned to the li^ht of the chandelier in the 
chamber. 

The paper was a plain sheet, bearing on its face these 
typewritten words: 

A woman will hand you this. Didn’t dare to send agent 
number 3, fear of being watched. There is thirty thousand 
here, all bills from Boston bank and can’t be traced. Ten thou¬ 
sand to Gloomy for upstate votes. Five to Happy for his crowd. 
They are acting together. Fifteen to double up after rollcall 
nay votes on House Bill 42,110. Depend on you not let city 
reps know what farmers got per vote. 


The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 221 

“It’s the anti-gambling bill!” exclaimed the intruder, 
being somewhat more familiar with the legislation than 
most citizens. “Thirty thousand! And goes to vote to¬ 
morrow afternoon. Mary, whoever she is, is going to 
play the double-cross on the gang. No wonder she threw; 
a fit when she seen what was in the bag. I certainly 
have luck with women!” 

He dropped the sheet on the towel that served as a 
cover for the marble-topped table. As if echoing its soft 
rustle there came a slight sound from the door. Some 
one had inserted a key. 

The man’s first instinct, as it would have been had 
he been invading a private home in the night-time, was 
to put out the lights. Here in a hotel, however, it would 
probably mean a scream or shout, followed by many 
pairs of running feet and no hope of escape. His sec¬ 
ond instinct was to draw the life-preserver from his back 
pocket and deal the person at the door a sleep-inducing 
blow from behind as he or she entered. It was too late! 
His third instinct was to slide down on to the floor and 
wriggle under the bed. But the disordered room would 
be enough to discover his presence! His fourth inspi¬ 
ration was a good one. The woman, who was probably 
now at the door, intended to misappropriate thirty thou¬ 
sand dollars of a corruption fund. Had she meant to 
deliver the bag as directed she would now be on the train 
on the way to the capital. The money was now hers. 
She and he were in the same difficulty. Both were 
thieves. He lit a cigarette, and sitting down in the 
wicker rocking-chair, crossed his legs. The door opened. 
The woman stepped in. 

“Don’t scream, Mary,” said the man almost noncha¬ 
lantly. “Perhaps you and I can fix this up between us.” 

He had an opportunity to study her unveiled counte- 


222 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

nance in the moment that followed his words. He had 
expected her to show her emotions in a change of ex¬ 
pression, but was astounded to see how quickly she 
recovered from her astonishment and how little she 
disclosed of fear. 

She was thirty-two, perhaps, tall and not unattrac¬ 
tively angular, and, though her face was marked as if 
by routine office work of some kind and appeared tired, 
she was not lacking in a certain reminiscence of beauty. 
She had gray eyes. Her hair was parted severely in the 
middle, as if to indicate that she was some sort of a fem¬ 
inine sacrifice dedicated to the machinery of the business 
world. 

“Come in and shut the door,” cajoled the man. *Tm 
not in love with you. And you aren’t going to call help 
to get me into trouble, because that would mean trouble 
for you. We’re in the same fix. Come in 1 ” 

He was playing a dangerous game. He knew it. He 
pointed to the paper on the table to indicate he had read 
it. With the greatest satisfaction he saw her close the 
door after her. 

“Who are you?” she asked in a tense whisper. 

“My name’s Paymaster,” he replied good-naturedly. 
“I bet on a horse by that name once and won a pot of 
money. I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m a crook.” 

Miss Inness gathered herself. 

“You interest me,” she said. 

Paymaster smiled with admiration. 

“I have no specialty,” he went on; “I do the thing that 
comes along. That’s why the police haven’t got me 
classed. I’d have had your thirty thousand if you hadn’t 
come back at the wrong time, but even then I usually 
have luck with women. I’ve got a proposition. After all, 
it’s your wit against mine—ain’t it?” 


The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 223 

“I suppose so,” replied the woman coldly. 

“You were sent up by somebody, probably a lawyer, 
with this here bag of vote-getters. Here is a piece of 
typewriting that goes with it. It looks as if the man 
wouldn’t trust to dictation and rapped this out himself. 
But he knows that typewriting can be traced to the 
machine that did it. I know it can and so do the police. 
With this paper you’ve got the man who sent this dough 
and the whole gang, too, right by the throat. They can’t 
holler for their money back or they’d call the district 
attorney.” 

“I realized that,” said Miss Inness, leaning against 
the foot of the bed. “But I suggest you do not talk so 
loud.” 

“Right-o,” said Paymaster. “Well, now, I’ve come 
into this. The worst thing you’ve got on me is that I’m 
in your room, being as I climbed over the transom. But 
I’ve got something worse on you. You started off with 
the thirty. And we’ve both got something worse yet on 
your boss. He sent the money and wrote the letter. 
How do we divide? 

Mary Inness smiled, with a trace of sadness. 

“You don’t quite understand,” she said quietly. “You 
see, I’ve just telephoned Mr. Valingworth, who employs 
me, that I am here. He is on his way by automobile now. 
He asked for a conference. That changes the thing 
somewhat, doesn’t it?” 

Paymaster’s face indicated by a little flash of anx¬ 
iety and fear that it did. 

“Who are you anyway ?” he said, leaning forward. 

“I’m the woman with whom you say you are going 
to have luck. There is no reason for concealing what 
you can find out. I’m a stenographer. I’m the personal 
stenographer and secretary and recipient of abuse of 


224 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

Mr. Colon D. Valingworth, of Valingworth & Dowese, 
Pine Street. I’ve had the position for fifteen years. I 
am not exactly a thief. I have the thirty thousand dol¬ 
lars, to be sure, but I intend to give it to the Clinton 
Home for Women. It will be better there than in the 
legislature. I made up my mind to that when I had con¬ 
firmed my suspicions on the train. I’m not a fool. Mr. V. 
had no one else he could trust as he did me. He be¬ 
lieved I’d carry out any orders faithfully, like a piece of 
machinery with nothing human in it. He told me to go 
to a hotel up there in the capital and at eight tomorrow 
to put the bag outside room 89 and rap twice on the 
door and go away. But I am human after all. So the 
money goes to the Clinton Home unless Mr. V., when 
he comes, is willing to win back the thirty thousand dol¬ 
lars by fulfilling a certain condition.” 

“What?” asked the astonished Paymaster. “What 
condition? Unless what?” 

“Unless Mr. V. allows me to tell him how I came to 
him a fresh and hopeful girl, fifteen years ago, tender of 
heart and spirit, and how he has played upon my neces¬ 
sity to earn a living to keep me working year after year 
and giving two dollars of labor for every dollar he paid 
me. And unless he allows me to tell him how he has 
taken advantage of my necessity to live by swearing at 
me, abusing me, bullying me, and of how in his pleas¬ 
anter moods he has preached all the woman in me out 
of me by his cynical talk and his poking fun at all that’s 
good and beautiful. He’s squeezed me dry! I’ve been 
a cringing, spiritless machine. And now he wants to 
use me in this dirty, dirty business, as if he owned my 
soul. And I won’t give him back the money, un¬ 
less-” 


'You’re joking!” he exclaimed. 



The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 225 


“I said unless-” she answered firmly. 

“Unless-?” Paymaster repeated. 

“Unless he lets me slap his face!” 

The thief sat silent a moment. Then he laughed and 
snorted. 

“He won’t do it. I’ve seen his picture. He is a bear 
of a man with gray hair, isn’t he? He’s got a place up 
the Hudson. The family is in swell. Something like 
that. You’ve gone crazy. You’ve got him on his letter 
all right, all right, but he won’t stand for the thirty- 
thousand-dollar slap.” 

“I want to see,” said Mary Inness almost tenderly. “I 
want to see whether he will or not. The world gets 
fooled on some of these big men. I want to slap his 
face. I think he’ll let me do it.” 

“Suppose he won’t,” said Paymaster with his eye¬ 
lids narrowing with their characteristic shrewdness. 
“How do we divide then? Do I get half? You said 
it was my wit against yours. Well, here’s a good gamble, 
my girl. I say he won’t stand for it. Suppose I win— 
do I get half?” 

“Yes,” said the stenographer with spirit. “I’ve got that 
much life in me yet.” 

“I’m on ?” Paymaster asked. “Is that what you mean ?” 

She nodded. 

“What time is it?” he inquired. 

She looked at her watch; the hands indicated eleven- 
ten. Paymaster pointed to the paper on the table. 

“I’ll just keep this in sight,” he explained. “It’s a good 
argument against your calling for help. It keeps us all 
in the same boat together. When it’s within my reach 
it’s a sort of gag against screams and such.” 

Mary Inness did not answer. She watched her visitor 
from the seat on the bed as if he might at any moment 




226 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

make some attack upon her or attempt the end for which 
he had at first come. Apparently her belief that she could 
summon help in any one of the passing moments was suffi¬ 
cient to hold the situation as it was. Paymaster, for his 
part, had reviewed all the possible ways in which he might 
make some such play. None of them was acceptable. 

‘‘This is a whale of a sketch!” he said, talking aloud for 
his own ears. “It gives me a pain! Excuse me, Miss 
Inness, if I say that I’ve known a lot of crazy women, 
but one that will pay thirty thousand dollars for a slap 
sounds like Matteawan to me!” 

“Possibly,” answered the other with a sniff; “but I con¬ 
sider it a bargain. Of course your opinion is not exactly 
disinterested. If you saw your chance I think you would 
probably knock me on the head.” 

“I’m too much of a gentleman for that,” said Paymas¬ 
ter, lying gracefully. “And I rather like you because you 
are nervy.” 

Miss Inness gave a little smile that was composed of 
sadness, diappointment and loneliness. 

“I prefer that you make no love to me,” she said. “I 
have taken vows duly witnessed by my typewriter and 
rows of lawbooks on a shelf. I have dedicated myself to 
the office and a furnished front parlor on Twenty-eighth 
Street.” 

“Poor little girl!” exclaimed Paymaster. 

Mary, watching him from the corner of one eye, went 
to the window and then looked down into the street. 

“You’re not a very successful flirt,” she said calmly. 
“It’s all white with snow outside. I’m sorry you have no 
overcoat.” 

Paymaster winced. 

“You’re an old maid all right,” he growled for revenge. 


The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 227 

“That’s what I was pointing out.” she said. “Listen, 
there’s a motor car now.” 

“They won’t let this Valingworth come up, will they?” 
exclaimed the man fretfully, scenting an unforeseen com¬ 
plication. “You ain’t going out that door either!” 

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said; “it’s all right. I’ve left 
word to have him shown up and he’s coming alone.” 

Paymaster lit another cigaret. Then came a tap on 
the door. 

“Let him in,” he commanded, folding his arms. He 
showed no sign of his fear that in some way he was about 
to be outwitted and trapped, except for his shifty glances 
at this and that exit and at the strategic positions possible 
in case the affair turned out to be one for fight and at¬ 
tempted escape. 

Miss Inness, on her part, seemed outwardly as cool. 

“Hide behind that wardrobe,” she said to Paymaster, 
and a second later ushered in the newcomer respectfully 
as if into a meeting of directors. “How do you do, Mr. 
Valingworth?” she said. 

The lawyer was a heavy man. His face was powerful; 
some of its lines were as set as those of a bronze head. 
His hair was thick, iron-gray and brushed back, suggest¬ 
ing a restless, nervous force. Decision was in his chin, 
hard sense in his large, cold blue eyes. His strong hands 
were shut as if in anger; his thin, flexible lip moved as if 
holding in leash the terrors of his wrath. 

“What’s this all signify?” he cried. “Is it blackmail, 
eh? Now let me tell you that within three hours I will 
have you in the hands of the police!” 

“Come, come, Mr. Valingworth,” said Mary, moving 
round the table to keep out of his reach. “You are a 
sane man. You know very well you would not have me 


228 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

arrested. See! Here is a letter on this table. It goes 
with the contents of the bag and it would look well in a 
disbarment proceeding, wouldn’t it? Don’t try to bom¬ 
bard me with your rant and strike poses. I’ve worked 
for you fifteen years and have always been at a disad¬ 
vantage. Now it’s you who are at a disadvantage. Sit 
down!” 

“Sit down?” gasped the great lawyer. “No, ma’am.” 

“You make it hard for me,” Miss Inness said. “Per¬ 
sonally I am tired of the whole thing. I can scream at 
any time and let the cat out of the bag. I have a mind 
to take my chances with you in spreading this whole 
affair before the authorities.” 

“Well—well—I-” 

“Sit down!” 

Mr. Valingworth sat down. 

“It was my intention to give this money to the Clinton 
Home for Women,” said Mary. “But, of course, a 
woman’s peculiarities will come out. I am curious.” 

Here she paused. 

Mr. Valingworth seized this opportunity to execute 
a change of front. 

“Why, that is all right,” he said cajolingly. “Miss 
Inness, you and I can adjust this matter. I knew that 
you were not dishonest. I knew it all the time. We might 
come to some understanding as we ride back in my car. 
It’s only a block or two to the garage. I’ll go myself and 
tell my chauffeur. I will only be a minute.” 

“Sit down!” 

“What are you curious about?” he asked after a mo¬ 
ment, moving uneasily on his seat. 

“I am curious to know whether you big men are big or 
,only seem so,” said Mary. “You have taken all the fem¬ 
inine out of me and so I can talk that way now. I’ve al- 


The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 229 

ways served you and stood your refined brutalities be¬ 
cause I believed I had to or else lose my job. For fifteen 
years you’ve held that unspoken threat over my head to 
crush my self-respect. Now I’ve got something to hold 
over your head and I want to find out whether big men, 
as they call themselves, are any different from us little 
fry.” 

“How’s that ?” asked the lawyer. 

“Sit down!” Mary demanded. “Sit down and wait 
where you are.” 

She stepped into the bathroom. 

“Don’t get up,” she cautioned. “Wait a minute. I’ll 
find it. I’m going to show you something. I’m going 
to interest you, Mr. Valingworth.” A second later she 
appeared again—the leather bag was in her hand. 

“Ah!” exclaimed the lawyer involuntarily. “So it’s 
here!” 

“Yes,” said the woman, “and here is the letter too— 
the—er—damaging letter.” 

He looked at it eagerly. 

“Now, Mr. Valingworth—prominent attorney, owner 
of a summer villa and motor cars—big, strong, profane, 
blustering, terrible Mr. Valingworth, don’t make any mis¬ 
take in my meaning to carry out my little thirty-thousand- 
dollar drama. Here’s the bag and the letter. There’s only 
one way you can have them.” 

“How ?” cried the other, rising. 

“By letting me slap your face.” 

“It’s absurd,” roared the lawyer, growing red with his 
wrath. “What is it all for?” 

“It means so much to me!” cried the woman. Her face 
was tense and white with a look of desire. 

“Bah!” he roared, throwing up his arms. “You’re 
mad! It’s absurd. Give me that bag, you-” 


230 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Stop!” Mary cried, holding up her ten thin fingers. 
“Do you want me to scream?” 

“But, Miss Inness-” he began. 

She smiled grimly. 

“You have ten seconds,” she said. “Be a man! Refuse 
to be bullied the way you have always bullied me. Don’t 
sell your self-respect for thirty thousand dollars the way 
I have sold mine for half that price. That’s my advice. 
But at the end of ten seconds I will scream for help un¬ 
less-” 

“Unless-?” 

“Unless you put out that powerful face of yours and let 
me slap it.” 

The lawyer looked about the room. 

“This is between you and me,” he suggested. 

“You have five seconds, Mr. Valingworth.” 

“It is mad.” 

“I hunger for it. You have two seconds.” 

He thrust his face forward. 

He winced. 

He closed his eyes. 

Miss Inness uttered a little cry of joy—a forerunner 
of a pleased little laugh. 

“That is all,” she said quietly. “The drama is over. 
Open your eyes. I’ve known you all along—you and 
men like you. I was sure I was right. There’s the 
money. It’s yours. Go now l Don’t stop to talk. Go!” 

Valingworth reached for the bag and the sheet of paper, 
but did not raise his eyes to meet her sneering face. As 
he went out the door he did not look like a man of power. 

Paymaster stepped down from the wardrobe. “I sup¬ 
pose now you are satisfied!” he said sourly. 

“Yes,” said Mary, “and now I am going to gather 




The Thirty-Thousand-Dollar Slap 231 

together my things and leave this hotel. What about 
you?” 

Paymaster did not answer. He was listening to the re¬ 
treating footsteps of the man with the bag, and he felt 
in his back pocket for the little pouch of lead shot with 
which men are assaulted from behind. 

Miss Inness smiled at him sweetly. 

“You won’t forget me,” she said as he walked toward 
the door. 

“Why do you ask?” growled Paymaster. 

“I didn’t ask. I said you wouldn’t.” 

Just before Paymaster slid out into the hall he received 
the impression that the stenographer was laughing at him. 

He went quickly to his own room, pulled on his shoes, 
ran softly to the stairs, listened and then went down. He 
saw the lawyer, still holding the bag close under his arm, 
go out by the front door. 

The office, with its tiled floor and ticking clock and 
sleepy clerk and empty wall chairs, was still. Paymaster 
crossed it without disturbing its peace and slipped out into 
the swirling snow. 

His footsteps, following the imprints of the lawyer’s 
progress toward the garage, made no clatter. He went 
one block. Then there was a turn. In the side street the 
shadows were heavy; even the white snow seemed dark 
there. He increased his pace running softly on the balls 
of his feet. The man ahead did not hear any sound other 
than the wail of the wind, or see much besides the blind¬ 
ing dance of the flakes. 

Paymaster having reached the heels of his victim, 
swung the pouch of lead shot with precision. It settled 
without noise across the back of Mr. Valingworth’s thick 
neck and delivered the lawyer a new experience in the ob- 


232 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

literation of sensations. The unconscious body pitched 
forward; the bag fell at Paymaster’s feet. 

There was no time to be lost. 

The adventurer knew that his best chances were in 
leaving the city. Accordingly he rolled the limp body out 
of its overcoat, and, putting the stolen garment on, hid his 
prize beneath. Because later the police, having no other 
description, would pick up their clews by it, he recognized 
the folly of being seen in possession of the bag by any one. 
He caught an electric car. 

“Cold night,” he said to the conductor. 

At the railroad station luck was still with him; an ex¬ 
press from the north was at the moment standing under 
the train-shed, engine panting. 

As the coach pulled out he folded the bag up in his new 
coat and tossed it carelessly into the rack above him. 

“May have some snowplows out before morning,” he 
suggested to the brakeman. 

Half an hour later he was in the good old familiar me¬ 
tropolis once more. He teased his anticipation; he even 
stopped at an all-night lunchroom to drink coffee from a 
thick china mug. It was late when he crept up the stairs 
of his lodging house and shut his door behind him. 

He opened a jackknife and slit the bag across one side, 

“I always did have luck with women!” he said aloud. 

He turned the thing inside out. A closely stuffed wad 
of blue mercerized cotton wrapped around a piece of gas- 
pipe fell on the table. That was all. He shook the folds 
out of the cloth. He smiled grimly when he saw what was 
in his hands. It was a woman’s petticoat. 


A STRAIN OF BLOOD 


Observant persons walking through Saint Michaels 
Street for the first time usually stop a moment to look 
at the forbidding aspect of Number 35. For three gen¬ 
erations it has been the home of the Erringmans—one of 
those solitary mansions which are now and then found 
resisting the imperceptible tide of change in the city life. 
It has half an acre of ground around it; three or four 
trees and some shrubs still grow within the inclosure of a 
severe cast-iron fence. In winter the ground is covered 
with sooty snow, and the rest of the year with dead leaves. 
It is, to be sure, an open spot in the midst of garish blocks, 
but for some reason its presence and the existence of the 
ugly, middle-century mansion, with its French roof and 
brown gloom, fill one with resentment. 

Marcus Erringman is the last of the Erringmans, and, 
like the two generations before him, he touches nothing 
that does not turn about to shower riches upon him. He 
is nearly forty-five and a bachelor. Like the dead Erring¬ 
mans, who were strange, cold and shrewd, he is harsh, 
contained and cynical. Last year, in May, he returned 
from Florida; he always took nine months of Europe, 
the tropics or New York hotel life. 

In the rear of the great, damp tomb of a parlor was the 
library, now warmed by an open fire. The solemn desk 
in the middle of this library was covered with a glass 
slab; upon it were engineers’ maps of several thousand 
acres of Florida land recently bought by Marcus for spec- 
illation in turpentine, on which there had just been dis- 
233 


234 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

covered deposits of phosphate rock sufficient in extent to 
make the fortunes of six families. 

On the four walls, in oval frames, the gilt of which 
age had dimmed but little, were four portraits. There 
was Girard Erringman, who had been Governor of the 
state; Morton Erringman, his son, the father of Marcus; 
Hortense Erringman, his sister, who had been the fore¬ 
most woman mathematician of her day; and Alice, the 
wife of old Girard, gazing across at her huband fom the 
opposite side of the room. Taken together, these faces 
represented sense of duty, rigorous honesty, firm con¬ 
fidence in self, cast-iron inflexibility, brevity, brusqueness, 
solemnity and determination. They affirmed by their 
majority the principle that the mind must curb and control 
the heart. 

In this company of four, Alice, the grandmother of 
Marcus, was the one whom a person could imagine might 
present a minority report. The painting of this young 
girl, who had died in her second motherhood at the mo¬ 
ment that Morton Erringman was born, was enlivened 
by brighter flesh tints, as if the blood of health, the soft 
glow of emotions and a warmth of nature coursed under 
her delicate skin. Her mouth was curved, the eyes shone 
in a sad and gentle smile, as if Alice, who in 1835 died 
at twenty-three years of age, still looked out upon a 
world that eternally demands and forgives the weak emo¬ 
tions of pity for yesterday, love for today and hope for 
tomorrow. 

Under the gaze of these old-fashioned portraits sat 
Marcus and three of his cronies. Between the four was 
an old card table which had been taken for debt from a 
retired sea captain by Girard Erringman in 1854. It was 
inlaid with strange woods. At one side sat DuFresne, the 


A Strain of Blood 235 

editor of the “Review of Economy”; opposite him, in the 
large easy-chair, was Doctor Tergison. Marcus’ partner 
in their game of whist was Carson Paulding, the presi¬ 
dent of the old Miners and Merchants’ Trust Company. 

The doctor leaned forward at this moment and tossed 
a card on the table. “There,” said he with a grunt of 
triumph, “that makes me even with you, Marcus. It’s 
just eleven, and DuFresne and I have the rubber.” 

Erringman rattled the large gold links in his immacu-r 
late cuffs and looked at his carefully kept hands in the 
way that irritated even his friends. DuFresne pinched 
his red nose with a forefinger and thumb; the banker, who 
liked success whether in per cents or cards, sniffed and 
turned away from the board. As he did so he found 
himself looking straight into the face of Marcus’ grand¬ 
mother. It almost seemed that, fixing her eyes upon him, 
she had compelled his gaze. “Hello!” said he, twisting 
his gray mustache. “I never noticed that portrait before. 
Who is it?” 

“Can’t you see?” Tergison growled. “It’s the one Er¬ 
ringman ancestor who looked decently weak and human. 
The others had strong minds and therefore-” 

“Therefore,” interrupted Marcus, his face suddenly 
grown hard, “lived on a foundation of common sense. 
They were not wafted by emotions or the opinions of the 
mob.” 

The other three looked upon him with surprise, because 
his most irritating characteristic, next to the care he be¬ 
stowed on his hands, was the care he took never to show 
the slightest disturbance of a perpetual calm. For the 
first time they now saw his skin, up to this thin gray hair, 
redden suddenly. They were sure that an extraordinary 
moment had arrived; but they did not speak. 



236 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

Marcus stood up and looked at the portrait of Alice, his 
grandmother, for several minutes. She smiled back at 
him. “Blood is a strange thing,” he said to the three. 
“There is not much of hers in me. No trace.” 

A gust of wind rattled the long French windows be¬ 
tween the high bookcases; the melancholy rain beat on 
the tin roof of the porch. 

“She was a pretty woman, a beautiful woman,” said 
Paulding, looking again at the portrait. 

“She was unhappy with my grandfather. I have some 
of her letters written to him,” said Marcus. “She was 
tender; he was hard. He was a just man.” 

“Without the folly of tenderness,” said the doctor. 

“She has been in the tomb for nearly a hundred years,” 
said Paulding with his stern gray eyes still on the por¬ 
trait. 

DuFresne added: “Her influence is gone.” 

“She is forgotten,” Tergison concluded. “Her weakness 
did not corrupt the Erringman strain of blood.” 

“That is true,” said Marcus. “She did not leave a heri¬ 
tage of personality. Her effect on the world was transi¬ 
tory. So it is with all like her. Her philosophy was in 

the heart; somewhat-” He would have gone on, but 

he never finished. 

There came a sharp rap at the long window pane be¬ 
tween the bookcases. The four men looked about. 

“Who was that?” asked Marcus in a sharp voice. 

“Listen!” said DuFresne. “Someone is on the porch.” 

And yet the four, holding their breath expectantly, 
could hear only the wind in the trees, the faint rattle of 
a cab beyond the cast-iron fence of Number 35, and the 
crackle of cooling embers on the hearth. 

“Yes,” exclaimed Paulding suddenly, “it is someone try¬ 
ing to get in.” 



A Strain of Blood 237 

A hand was what they saw—a red, rough hand, the 
fingers stained yellow as if by tobacco. From the bril¬ 
liantly lighted room it appeared as a detached and 
ghostly fist that, after a moment of hesitation, knocked 
again. 

Marcus, turning the key, opened the long sash. A blast 
of air rattled the engineers’ plans, whisked a card off the 
top of the pack, whirled the white cigar ashes out of the 
bronze tray, and brought into the room a smell of wet 
streets and pavements, of the corrupted salt water of the 
harbor, the odor of the city. Out of the night, as if he 
belonged to its sounds and odors, lurched a man. 

This stranger was not old, nor yet young. His frame 
was strong, but his face was seared and distorted by evil 
life. He was without a collar, his clothes were out at the 
elbows, ripped under the arms, worn at the knees, and his 
shoes were coming apart where once they had been sewed 
together. He stood inside the door, twirling his cap in 
his red, rough, discolored hands. Seeming to have diffi¬ 
culty in framing words he looked about at the four stern 
men, and the four stern men stared back at him. 

“Why didn’t you come to the front door?” asked Er- 
ringman accusingly. “You are a beggar?” The man did 
not answer. “I say, you are a beggar, aren’t you?” re¬ 
peated Marcus. 

“You’re right, mister,” said the stranger. “It was dark 
on the porch. I seen youse an’ I knocked. I wanted to 
ask for an old pair of shoes. I’ve been in a hospital. If 
any of youse don’t believe it, I’ll show you. I seen you 
through the winder. An’ I says: ‘There’s a gent who’ll 
do the right thing.’ ” 

Marcus examined his hands critically and shook the 
links in his immaculate starched cuffs. Finally he looked 
up, first at the man, then at DuFresne, Paulding and Ter- 


238 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

gison, then at the stranger again. “Perhaps you'd rather 
have money.” 

“Sure.” 

“Clothes?” 

“Sure. Anythin’.” 

“Yes; now let me tell you something: This is the house 
of Erringman, and I am the only one left.” 

At this the stranger grinned. “You’re guyin’ me,” he 
said. Evidently he wished to be sure that all should know 
that he recognized the intent. 

“Oh, no,” said Marcus, “I’m not guying you. You 
came just in time. These gentlemen are my intimate 
friends. They know me very well. Now listen to me 
carefully.” 

“Yes,” said the man. 

“Come over here,” Marcus commanded. 

The water in the stranger’s shoes made an unpleasant 
sound as he walked to the other side of the massive desk. 

“Do you see that portrait?” asked Marcus, lighting a 
cigar. “The one of the young woman?” 

“Yes.” 

“That was my grandmother. That picture was painted 
a year before she died—in her youth—over seventy-five 
years ago. All those who loved her are dead too. They 
have lain for years in the graveyard where shoes and 
money and clothes, for which you are now asking, are no 
use.” 

“She is smiling,” the other remarked with embarrass¬ 
ment. 

“Never mind that. Listen: Do you know what a prac¬ 
tical Christian is? 

“No.” 

“Neither do I.” Marcus paused. “But I suppose an 




A Strain of Blood 239 

impractical Christian,” he went on, “is one who would 
give you money and shoes tonight without asking you 
whether you were lying or whether you’d pawn the shoes 
or spend the money in doing more harm to yourself. 
They’d just feel sorry for you and give you something 
and believe that, in using their hearts instead of their 
heads, they had done what was right. Well, that was 
the kind of woman my grandmother was. Look at her! 
Don’t you think she was that kind?” 

“Yes, I get her, that way,” said the vagrant, squinting 
one eye judicially. 

“Her husband didn’t believe in any such thing, and 
his son didn’t believe in any such thing, and his grand¬ 
son—here you see him before you—doesn’t believe in any 
such thing,” said Erringman. “And yet she tried to 
leave her idea behind her. She thought her way was 
a good way and I think she lived up to it as well as she 
could. When she died she took her husband’s hand and 
asked him to believe in her way, and she wrote letters 
too. One was to her little daughter to read when she was 
old enough and one was to her little son, just born, who 
was my father. But they weren’t the kind of people 
who were influenced by that kind of request. Now do 
you understand any of this?” 

Erringman paused again, and his friends shifted their 
positions in their chairs. 

“I get it,” the other answered. 

“So you see that for seventy-five years she has been 
forgotten. She came into the world and went out of it. 
Her children were not like her. Her influence has been 
nothing. All that’s left of her is a picture—a very good 
portrait. That’s all. And tomorrow I’m going to take 
that picture down and have it carried up into the attic. 


240 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

It represents nothing except a lesson of how quickly a 
person is forgotten. Now, pay attention,” he continued, 
pulling open a desk drawer. “Do you see this ?” He held 
up something that glittered like gold and wound about 
his finger as if by volition of its own. 

The man looked back at the smiling portrait. “It’s her 
hair!” he said. 

“Yes, a lock of her hair. At the last moment she cut 
it off and put it into the hand of my grandfather. And 
she told him it was to remind him of her and that she 
wanted him to soften his heart toward the world. Maybe 
you know what she meant; I don’t.” 

The man reached out to touch the strand with the 
tip of his yellowed; trembling finger. “It’s a lock of her 
hair all right; but what has she got to do with these shoes 
of mine?” the vagrant asked sullenly, with a glance at 
the misshapen, burst-out foot coverings beneath his tat¬ 
ter-edged trousers. “If you don’t feel like helpin’ a guy, 
why all the talk? You say she would have helped me, 
an’ you’re goin’ to say you ain’t in her class an’ won’t 
help me. Let it go at that.” 

“Exactly,” said Marcus; and quoting the stranger: “Let 
it go at that. Shut the door after you.” 

The creature shuffled toward the porch again, bracing 
his shoulders as if he dreaded the cold snap of the rain 
and the bite of the wind. Four stern faces looked into 
his as he turned once with sly, evil hate written on his 
twisted countenance. Suddenly, whirling around, he 
pointed a crooked forefinger toward the owner of the 
house. “See here,” he said hoarsely, “you say your heart 
don’t control you the way it did her?” He raised his 
finger to the portrait of Alice Erringman. 

Marcus, surprised, nodded. 

The man out of the slums spoke through his teeth. 


‘-'~V 


A Strain of Blood 241 

“Maybe it’s your head, huh? Well, suppose you walk 
out of here tomorrow an’ catch a sore throat an’ it ties 
you into knots the way it did me. That ain’t your head, 
is it?” 

“No,” said Marcus, leaning over the table eagerly, “that 
is Destiny. You have some sense, after all.” 

“Fate, eh?” 

“Yes, Fate—Destiny—Fortune—call it what you will.” 

“Bigger than a man’s head, ain’t it?” the other asked, 
looking at the four old cronies. “An’ it’s more the boss 
of you than your head or your heart, eh ?” 

“Yes,” Erringman said solemnly, and in a tone so 
suppressed that it made DuFresne, Tergison and Paulding 
turn to look at him. 

“Well, why not leave it to Fate ?” the vagrant said with 
an insinuating leer. “I ask you to help a feller who is 
down and out. I want a new start in life, see? Luck has 
been against me every time. It’s always been with you. 
Let’s leave it to the cards.” 

The doctor rubbed his chin. “How?” 

“How ?” the stranger repeated, made bold by the inter¬ 
est he had caused. “Why, it’s easy, gents. I’ll make it 
a long chance too. We’ll all draw cards; an’ if this gent 
here who’s been talkin’ to me gets the lowest card, he will 
help me and give me some kind of a new start in life. 
But if he doesn’t draw the low card, I go out onto the 
street and it’s the wet shoes an’ no breakfast for mine. 
He says Fate is his goddess. How much does he trust 
her, eh?” 

DuFresne smiled. “How much do you trust her, 
Marcus ?” 

Erringman, arising, shook his tall, lean frame in a 
manner peculiarly his own. “It is quite all right,” said 


242 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

he easily. “I am very glad to be able to demonstrate that 
Destiny will always treat with especial kindness the fam¬ 
ily of Erringman. I will accept your terms, my good 
Sir Stranger of the Night. It is my understanding that 
only if I draw the lowest card of all I must give you a 
new chance.” 

Paulding laughed at the formal bow which the rich 
bachelor made to the vagrant, at the ironical, mocking 
way the host treated the ragged man; the doctor smiled, 
too, as Marcus, without a crack of emotion upon his cold 
face, lifted the pack of cards upon a silver tray and 
passed them toward Paulding. 

“Let the stranger draw first,” said DuFresne. “He is 
your latest guest.” 

“I stand corrected,” replied Erringman, turning toward 
the beggar. 

But the outcast did not see the proffered tray; he was 
staring up again at the portrait of Alice Erringman. On 
the painted background of rich browns and dark purples, 
her young face was luminous with the light of life. A 
tender smile upon the pink lips of her delicate mouth 
appeared and faded as if there was, indeed, coursing 
blood in the canvas of the artist. She looked down wist¬ 
fully at the vagrant, and after a moment he turned and 
picked up the lock of dark golden hair from the table. 
This hair suddenly sprang into life, and like a thing of 
volition wound itself about the grimy, yellow fingers. 
The man jumped as if it were red-hot wire, shook his 
hand and freed himself from the uncanny contact. 

“Are you goin’ to put her in the attic?” he asked. 

“Yes,” said Marcus sternly. “Draw your card!” 

“She’ll be forgotten—she and what she said?” 

“Yes. Draw your card!” 


A Strain of Blood 243 

The stranger reached his trembling right hand toward 
the pack. “Here goes, Fate!” he said. “What’s high?” 

“Ace is high,” replied Paulding from under his gray- 
beard. “Don’t forget—ace is high.” 

The wind of the night had risen to a shriek; it wailed 
around the porch of the old Erringman house, asserting 
itself above all the noises of the city. The rain slapped 
the windows viciously; their frames were rattling in the 
blast. And the pressure flung open the unlatched door 
leading onto the porch, filling the study again with the 
spray of the storm and a sweep of air which, before Du- 
Fresne could close the entrance, had crossed the room 
and sent the embers on the hearth into a wild dance. 

The beggar did not draw the card; his arm appeared 
to have turned to the motionless metallic arm of a bronze 
figure. Slowly he raised his suspicious eyes toward the 
four pair which regarded him curiously. “Who came 
in?” 

“What’s the matter?” 

“Who’s behind me ?” the creature gasped. 

“Nobody.” 

A twist of his ducked head reassured him; he found 
himself staring again into the affectionate, wistful eyes of 
the painting. “Do me a favor,” said he hoarsely, turning 
toward Marcus. “I don’t want to have the cards drawn 
yet. My luck ain’t with me, see? You wouldn’t draw 
a low card. I’d lose.” 

“You’re a coward?” 

“No, I ain’t. I’ve got to go get my luck. Will you 
stand for that? It won’t take me ten minutes; it won’t 
take me five. Just stand for that, will you? Give a feller 
a chance.” 

“Go on,” said Marcus with a sneer. “Go get your 


244 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

luck. It won’t do you any good. The Erringmans always 
win. It is Destiny/’ 

The vagrant did not answer. He turned and went 
'forth into the night. 

“Something has frightened him,” said Paulding. 

DuFresne coughed. “What did he think was looking 
at him from behind?” he asked. “He’s an odd specimen.” 

“He will not come back,” said Erringman, putting the 
tray of cards down. 

The doctor was looking up at the portrait; he sighed. 
“Alice—or Destiny,” he said, and leaning forward, he 
picked up the cards, shuffled them and threw them upon 
the tray. 

“I think I will not wait,” said Paulding after a long 
pause in which only the French clock on the mantel as¬ 
serted its personality. He yawned. 

“What was that?” exclaimed DuFresne. 

The four men looked at each other. 

“It sounded like footfalls in this room.” 

“Someone walking on the porch. He’s coming back 
after all,” explained Tergison. 

“You are right,” Marcus said. 

A face came and went in and out of the darkness of 
night beyond the French window. A hand fumbled at 
the latch. The door opened. Someone outside was 
breathing hard; it was the breathing of one who had ex¬ 
perienced sudden physical exertion. The stranger had 
come back. He stumbled in, for he was carrying in 
his arms a heavy, wet, bedraggled bundle of clothing. He 
slid this bundle down toward the floor and out of it ap¬ 
peared head, arms and thin legs—a little girl of about 
five, blinking at the light, wiping a dirty face with dirty 
hands. 


A Strain of Blood 245 

“Quit your cryin’!” said the man. He spoke as if he 
had picked up some hungry kitten. 

The owner of the Erringman mansion scowled. “What 
did you bring that child for?” he inquired sternly. 
“Where did you get her? Why did you bring her 
here?” 

“My luck,” the beggar said with half a grin. 

“It’s a lie,” answered Marcus. “Why did you bring 
her?” 

The other pointed toward the portrait. “That woman 
ain’t so dead as you said she was,” he said with convic¬ 
tion. “Listen to me! It was her who made me bring 
this kid. This kid lived with Joe Colt in what they call 
the ‘Sardine Buildin’.’ You know it—a lodgin’ house on 
West Street. This kid ain’t never had no chance. She’s 
Joe Colt’s brother’s kid, an’ all her folks is dead. Joe 
beat her all the time; an’ now they’ve sent Joe’s girl out 
to the State Farm, an’ no kid oughter be left alone with 
Joe.” 

One by one his four listeners had risen to their feet. 

“Well?” said Marcus. 

“I knew I’d never win drawin’ a card for myself,” the 
other went on. “I’ll draw for this kid, see? What you 
said you’d do for me if you get the low card, you can 
do for her.” 

Erringman looked coldly upon the little creature, who 
clung to the stranger’s wet and ragged trousers, blinking 
at the light, dazed, frightened. “It’s of no consequence,” 
he remarked comfortably. “Destiny is destiny. You will 
see. I will not draw the low card. Draw for yourself 
or draw for her—it is all the same.” He glanced up 
again at the portrait of his grandmother who had died 
when she was twenty-three. “All the same,” he repeated, 
reaching for the tray upon which was the pack of cards. 


246 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“The kid never had no chance,” the evil-eyed man said 
apologetically. 

“Draw one, Paulding,” said Marcus. He spoke gayly. 
“See if you can help to embarrass your old friend. I 
challenge you all.” 

Paulding looked covertly at his drawing and smiled. 

Tergison drew. “Ace is high,” said he before he had 
glanced down at the pasteboard. 

DuFresne took one which lay upon the top of the pack, 
then gave a noncommittal sniff. 

Erringman offered the tray to the other. 

“I’ll draw last,” said the stranger sullenly. 

“Very well,” said Erringman, taking his choice with¬ 
out looking at his own slim, cold fingers as they moved. 
“I will not even look at mine yet.” 

The beggar put his arm about the little creature at 
his side; he looked up at the picture of Alice Erringman 
as if he expected from her some kind of assistance; then 
at last, with faltering hand, he pulled from the pack one 
card. This card he turned up with painful slowness until' 
at last he was staring down at it. His hand began to 
tremble visibly. He put his fingers upon the front of 
his lean, unshaven throat; he gulped; he licked his dry 
lips with the tip of his tongue; he shivered as if the cold 
rain had chilled him to the bone. 

“Well,” said the host, throwing his own card onto 
the mantelpiece face down. “I have not looked at mine. 
But I am not the low man. Yours, Paulding?” 

“A king! Something for you to beat, Marcus. What 
does DuFresne hold?” 

“There it is. A ten spot. Pm not low.” 

“And Tergison?” 


A Strain of Blood 247 

Tergison smiled. “If the stranger does as well, we 
have stuck Marcus/’ he said. “I’ve a queen.” 

Erringman turned toward the wreck of a man who still 
stood looking down at his card. “What’s yours?” he 
asked sharply. 

The man did not reply; and then, as Marcus observed 
the expression upon that distorted face, he threw back 
his head. He laughed. This was one of the few occa¬ 
sions in his life upon which he laughed uproariously. He 
shouted, he caught his breath, he shook with his explo¬ 
sions of derision. He lifted his face toward the ceiling 
and laughed. 

It was evident enough that the little girl, who had been 
shaking with her unreasoning grief at being alive and 
who now took her dirty little fists out of her eyes, entirely 
misinterpreted the cause of Marcus Erringman’s mirth. 
She believed that it expressed good nature—the opposite 
of anger, cursing, and the spirit behind a brutal assault. 
For the first time she now moved. Her face, dirty as it 
was, shone with a smile of complete confidence. She ran 
toward Marcus, fell into his lap and before he could re¬ 
cover from his astonishment curled up there, an irrespon¬ 
sible, satisfied animal. 

The three old cronies all started forward as if their 
friend’s clothing was on fire. 

“The child is dirty—the mud, the cud,” cried the 
banker. “The ugly little thing!” 

“Ugh!” exclaimed DuFresne. 

“Let me take her,” said the doctor. 

Marcus had been staring down at the miserable creature 
who had fastened herself upon him with her little warm 
fingers clinging desperately to his slim hands. “Stop, 
Tergison,” said he. “See if she will go to you.” 


248 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Come,” the doctor pleaded, holding out his hands, 
“Come, dear.” 

“No! I don’t wanter.” 

Marcus heard these childish words and aimed at the 
doctor a grunt of contempt. “Whom do you love?” he 
whispered to the child. 

“You.” 

The last of the Erringmans then did a strange thing; 
he caught her body close to him and buried his face in 
the rags that clothed her. 

“What have you got ?” growled the beggar, raising his 
head at last. “Look at your card. Curse you! You 
make sport of them who is down an’ out. Let’s see what 
you’ve got. You’ve put your faith in Fate. All right,. 
Let’s see what Fate says.” 

Marcus took down the pasteboard from the mantelpiece 
and turned it over. A fright came into his countenance; 
he looked with staring eyes at the face of the card; he 
glanced down at the child he had left sitting on the chair 
from which he now had risen. He held the card with 
the thumbs and fingers of both his hands. Once he looked 
up quickly at the portrait above him. His face was 
flushed; he looked wildly from one to the other of the 
four men. “The devil did this!” he growled savagely. 
“Do you hear me ?” 

“You have lost?” exclaimed DuFresne. 

Erringman looked down again at the child. Her eyes 
were fixed upon him and her reaching fingers had caught 
one of his pockets and were tugging at him to draw him 
down to her. 

“What have you got, Marcus?” the doctor said. 
“Speak.” 

The host ran his finger about his collar and coughed. 


A Strain of Blood 249 

“The Erringmans are good losers,” he stammered, press¬ 
ing the button beside the mantel. “Take this child,” he 
said to the man-servant who opened the hall door. “If 
you know what to do for her, Wilkins, you know more 
than I do. Better learn; she’ll be our guest for an indefi¬ 
nite period.” 

His three friends watched him in amazement as he 
whispered strange confidences into the child’s ear and 
thrust her into the arms of the stupefied servant. The 
three faced him as he came back and stood beside the 
desk. 

“What did you draw?” said they as if out of one 
mouth. 

“Destiny failed me,” the host stammered, wetting his 
lips again. “I drew—I drew—the lowest card of all— 
the two of spades.” 

No sooner were these words out of his mouth than 
the ragged vagrant of the slums rushed upon him. “You 
lie!” he shouted. “Show that card! Show ’em you ain’t 
tellin’ .the truth! Show ’em that the woman in the picture 
still lives! Show ’em that she is in your blood! Show 
’em that card!” 

“Stop!” cried Marcus. “Keep away!” 

“No!” the stranger roared, advancing on Erringman. 
“It weren’t Destiny. It was somethin’ else made you keep 
the kid.” He pointed toward Alice Erringman. “It was 
her!” 

Marcus retreated. He was too late; the man was upon 
him. Erringman tried to keep the card he still held in 
his closed fist, out of the reach of the grimy, weather- 
reddened, tobacco-stained, clutching fingers. The two 
men wrestled along the edge of the long library table; 
they grunted; they tumbled out of range of the out- 


250 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

stretched hands of Tergison, DuFresne and Paulding. 
The vagrant bent back the closed fist with his own claws; 
he stretched wide the white, well-cared-for fingers. He 
seized the crumpled card within them. He sprang away 
and held the captured pasteboard up so all could see. 

“I knew!” he roared, running toward the door in re¬ 
treat from the attack of Erringman’s friends. “Look!” 

The card which Marcus had drawn was the ace of 
hearts! 

The four men stood back, panting, as the vagrant with 
his sly, evil, twisted face stared at them from the doo~ 

“How did he know ?” gasped DuFresne. 

“I knew he lied because of Fate; I had the two of 
spades!” 

And with these words the creature, who had come out 
of the wet and darkness, plunged once more into the 
cavernous mouth of the night, leaving behind him four 
astounded men who stared up at the portrait of a woman 
who had lived long, long ago. 


A STORY FOR A CERTAIN LADY 

In the whole universe there appeared to remain only 
two living beings. 

The distant, low line of shore with its long fine wave 
of cream-colored sand dunes was broken only by occa¬ 
sional furry strips and a spot of red. The furry strips 
were patches of beach grass, now in winter yellowed and 
bleached almost ,to the color of the sand, and eternally 
hissing in the wind; the tiny red spot was the sports¬ 
man’s hut with a bit of black stovepipe to emit smoke 
from beech-wood fires. Now it was only a red spot like 
a dagger wound in the cream-colored skin of a reclining 
lady. 

Except for the low shore, everything was sea and sky; 
the sea deep purple, with the cold of winter water and 
with whitecaps leaping and galloping over the surface 
like infinite numbers of fleecy sheep running home from 
the eastern horizon, frightened by the blue-black forehead 
of the frowning storm. Except for the forehead of the 
frowning storm, the sky was a great bowl of cruel, start¬ 
ling blue. Under this bowl no sea birds flew with silvery 
wing-flash; out of the sea nothing was tossed as evidence 
of life below the surface. It was all water and sky and 
lifeless shore; everything, everywhere, blue and white 
and lifeless. 

To one of the two living human beings on the bare 
sand bar, a mile from shore in the center of this im¬ 
mensity, it must have appeared that Nature, with a mag¬ 
nificent eye for dramatic possibility, had set a tremendous 
scene for a tragedy, no less real because it was grotesque 
251 


252 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

and absurd. Even the sand spit, around which the shore 
current went in strange eddies and dancing flecks of foam, 
was dramatically bare. Not even a bit of seaweed had 
been thrown upon its surface. It was like the top of a 
clean altar of the sea, where, in the midst of this blue 
desert of emptiness two abandoned creatures were being 
offered for slow sacrifice. 

The man, who was kneeling over his unconscious com¬ 
panion, had rubbed the white wrists of the other be¬ 
tween his own salt and water rough-dried gloves until 
the flesh was lacerated; but that flesh remained a purplish 
white in sullen obstinacy against response. The cold 
had been terrible; the wind had lashed it on with the 
biting strokes of a whip. It had not dried the two men; 
it had merely frozen the water in their soaked clothes. 

The one who was stretched out as if entirely lifeless 
was unconscious. He had bne, well-crystallized features, 
rather sensitive and yet noi. without a suggestion of weak¬ 
ness of character. They were upturned towards the 
empty heavens, white as the carving upon a marble tomb. 
The eyes in this countenance, in spite of the fact that, 
for the time, they saw nothing, were staring up with a 
strangely anxious expression at the everlasting blue. 

The man, who had been working to restore the weak 
flow of blood in the veins of the other, stopped for a 
moment and rose, his face twisted by pain. He was a 
strong, boyish-appearing person but with premature gray 
hairs showing under the ear flaps of his hunting cap; if 
there were deep lines in his face and if his heavy shoul¬ 
ders drooped this was because of the struggles and hor¬ 
rors of the night which had gone and the day which 
had followed. Both men had had no food and no water 
for thirty-six hours. They had had only the salt, the 


A Story for a Certain Lady 253 

salt water, the salt ice that was now forming again along 
the ripples on the lee edge of the little sand bar, and 
the salt wind; only the snowflakes, the wind, the night, 
the desperate swim, the long cold aching hours and the 
empty immensity of the lifeless world of sea, sky, and 
distant sand dunes. 

Somewhere back of the sand dunes, five miles or more, 
there was a little railroad station painted a good deal 
the same color as the little duck-hunting camp which now 
appeared even more like a tiny red pin-prick on the cream- 
colored shore line as the slanting afternoon sun rays fell 
upon it. If one could get to the railroad station the one 
local train of the day would take a man back to the city 
in an hour and a half. That made it all the more absurd— 
that nearness of civilization. 

In two or three hours from the little red hut, built by 
a half-dozen of the members of a city club, one could be 
back where there was hot running water in a familiar 
tiled bathroom, where the buzz of the Avenue was below 
the window, where the butler would bring up a filet 
mignon bearnaise if one wanted it served in privacy, 
where there was a telephone and a billowy bed with linen 
sheets and fleecy blankets and the touch of soft warm 
hands. Out here on this bare spit of sand, where they 
had landed when the squall had swept them out of the 
shallows and overturned the littler rowboat long since 
vanished, there was nothing but dull suffering, quite like 
an evil dream, and the empty sea on which no shipping 
ever passed and the sand dunes where no coast guards 
ever patrolled and the little red hut, a mere stiletto prick 
on the beach, mocking a man with a thought of the fire 
and the bunks and the blankets and the bubbling coffee pot 
which might never be seen again. 


254 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

One could not make that swim in the icy water though 
driven crazy by thirst and hunger, and certainly not after 
the cold—that unexpected bitterness of cold—had frozen 
hands or feet as it would surely do in the end or had 
sucked out the warmth in a man and struck ice into his 
heart. One could not make that swim when this new 
storm had come up over the horizon and lashed the shore- 
ways into breakers. One certainly could not make that 
swim and leave a man behind to die alone. 

He stared with salt-stung eyes at the sea, hating it for 
making it possible to trap two men who had just stepped 
out of a comfortable urban world for a Saturday’s sport 
and upon whom death, when they had kicked off the 
covers on a yesterday morning, had served no notice of 
so good a claim. He hated it for showing him just how 
much wet and cold, hunger and thirst can do to a man 
where wealth and influence, social position and good 
manners are not counted of value. Well staged is a 
drama of nature where two living beings occupy the center 
of an empty lifeless blue, purple, and white universe, the 
center of a flat immensity over which is turned the limit¬ 
less blue of the bowl of sky! He hated it for everything. 
He feared it, too. It appeared to sway back under his 
eyes towards the forehead of storm peeping over the 
horizon, as if ready to surge forward and engulf the little 
white sand bar and its trapped men where hope of rescue 
was the hope of fools. 

Something akin ,to stupidity but a laughing kind of 
thing—a thing which laughed stupidly at nothing—went 
weaving back and forth through his head. He fought it 
for a moment and then raised his neck and shoulders until 
the ice on his corduroy hunting coat squeaked like a 
starched shirt and the red-cracked places on his neck 


A Story for a Certain Lady 255 

began to bleed again. After all, he must go now and 
kick and jounce and rub Bob into sensibility; everyone 
knew that this stupor brought on by the cold crept into 
a human being’s veins and chilled the heart and took life 
unawares. 

He bent down, pulled the other man up into a sitting 
posture, and began to slap desperately at his neck and ears 
and temples. 

“Come on!” he bellowed hoarsely from a parched 
throat over a swollen tongue. “Wake up!” 

He pushed his ear close to the other’s neck, listening 
for a pulse. It was there—wiry, thin, wearied. The 
unconscious man closed his eyelids, twisted his dry 
cracked lips and mumbled, “I owe it to her.” Then he 
opened his eyes, looked at his companion bending over 
him, and said, “I suppose it’s my old heart. You didn’t 
know about that, Doug? They wouldn’t give me any 
more life insurance last year.” 

“How you feel?” 

“Better.” 

In human life there is a strange persistence—the habit 
of living, perhaps—which makes all the resources of the 
body mobilize in a crisis and carry on once or twice a 
spirited battle before the fight is lost. The man he had 
called Douglas knew that this surge of vitality was not 
imagined. 

“Don’t try to get up,” the bigger man said. “You’ve 
been pretty much done.” 

The weaker one sat with his arms around his knees 
gazing out painfully at the approaching storm, scowling 
back at it and ducking his head now and then as if try¬ 
ing to find a quiet level below the stinging wind. 


256 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“What did I say?” he asked at last. 

“When?” 

“Was I talking about a woman?” 

The other evidently considered this trivial; he made a 
gesture of impatience. 

A dark patch appeared on the water scurrying towards 
them, leaving behind thick white patches of foam and 
curling cottony tops of broken waves. 

“I know, Doug, and you know, too, that there will 
be big seas breaking over this bar before midnight, eh?” 

“I’m not sure,” the other said, pacing with the crack¬ 
ling sound of a frozen skim on the wet sand. “But whal 
of it? There’s no getting away. It’s easy enough to wish 
we were before an open fire in the Club, but what’s the 
use?” 

The sick man squirmed his body around until he could 
look toward the cream-colored undulating line of shore 
with the red spot, where their camp stood. He looked 
for many minutes. 

“It isn’t such rough water—yet,” he said. “It might 
be a terrible swim, but there’s life at the end, eh?” 

“You couldn’t do it and that’s unfortunate but true, 
Bob.” 

“Maybe you could—eh?” There was a pleading in 
his voice. 

“I didn’t offer to try it this morning. If you had not 
been about done up I would have tried it. I might have 
got help and a boat and come back for you.” He shud¬ 
dered. “My God, my nerve is gone now! The water is 
like ice. A man would lose that battle. I’ve lost my 
nerve for it.” 

“I know what’s the matter,” the sitting one said, 
looking up. 


A Story for a Certain Lady 257 

“What?” 

“You know that if you leave me here I'd be gone by 
the time you’d come back—by the time you could get a 
boat and some help and come back.” 

“I said I’d lost my nerve,” the other replied doggedly. 
“You know the chances of that swim are ten to one 
against anybody. Instinct is a funny thing. Mine is 
to stick here. I’m clinging to life, old man. God, what 
a hunger I’ve got for it—even for a few hours—of this!” 

“If it weren’t for me you’d do it, Doug. You’d try to 
swim ?” 

The other did not answer; he was staring at the red 
spot on the beach. “No, I haven’t got the courage.” He 
almost whimpered; his voice broke. “Think of the fight 
against the tide running off that point! I can’t bear it. 
I’m done too, Bob—dizzy, sick. It would end by flopping 
over and drifting along the coast, face-down in that ice- 
water until somebody found the body on the beach.” 

“You’re a liar. You’re staying here for me.” 

“No.” 

A flurry of snow came down in pauses between the 
heavy squalls of lashing wind. The sea began to open 
its blue-black jaws and show its white teeth. 

The man on the sand, throwing his body back, remained 
for many minutes staring up at the thickening sky. At 
last he sat up. 

“I feel pretty well now, Doug,” he announced. “The 
weakness—you know—it comes in spells.” 

“I wish to heaven there was something I could do for 
you.” 

“There is. Sit down. I’ll tell you.” 

The other sat down beside him on the sand. 


258 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“I’ll tell you, Doug,” he went on. “You know as well 
as I do that I’ll never get away from this sand bar. A 
man can tell. I’ve had my message. I finish right here. 
Don’t let us fool ourselves. We’d both finish here if 
you stayed.” 

“I’m going to stay,” came the positive reply in a 
hoarse voice. “I’m sick of struggling with the idea of get¬ 
ting out of this trap. I know what is on the books for 
both of us.” 

“I think my feet—are frozen,” the other said. “Yours 
aren’t. That’s the difference. If I was in any shape I’d 
swim to shore or wear my arms off before I went down.” 

“For love o’ life.” 

“And another reason, too,” the sick man said, his voice 
growing feeble and thin. 

“What reason?” 

“A woman.” 

Douglas shifted his heavy body until He could stare 
into his companion’s white face. 

“What are you talking about! Especially you—at a 
time like this?” 

“You mean I’ve done a lot of flitting from flower to 
flower?” 

“Yes. Men who know you, Bob, and the older women, 
too, can’t help liking you, but your love affairs-” 

“Are against me?” 

“Rather! There was Mrs. Faynesworth as an example. 
Of course she could afford the chatter, but-” 

The other man sat up gazing, as if at his own mem¬ 
ories, and this caused the larger one to clip his sentence 
short. 

“It has been pretty bad,” the sick man admitted. “Of 
course, you are married and that’s been a protection to 




A Story for a Certain Lady 259 

you, but you’ve said truthfully enough what I wanted 
to bring out. I want you to realize that the fate of 
still another person is involved here—right here on this 
sand spit.” 

“A woman—a woman who depends upon you to-” 

“No, Doug. Don’t be so uneasy.” 

“But I don’t want you to talk. It’s just taking your 
strength, old man. And it’s bizarre ! You chat on just 
as if we were watching a game of billiards!” 

“There’s a good reason!” the other insisted, hugging 
his knees. “This isn’t one of the others. This is the one 
woman. This is all that was decent and fine in me, Doug. 
Only she and I know what she means to me.” 

“And you to her ?” 

“I mean nothing to her—nothing except that she saw— 
once—way inside me; and what she saw wasn’t ugly. It 
was one of those things that wouldn’t happen in a life¬ 
time again. She came to me and asked me to stop a little 
affair with a friend of hers.” 

He tried to wet his dry lips and then went on. “She 
didn’t know till then that she had been for a long time 
the only woman I could ever love as I could have loved 
her. She was just interceding for another and that is 
why she told me of herself, perhaps. She didn’t know. 
She told me something of her own unhappiness.” 

“Married ?* 

“Yes.” 

“Why unhappy?” 

“Lack of tenderness towards her. Just a careless drop¬ 
ping of the old companionship. Starved for love. She 
didn’t say these things but what she said was enough to 
reveal it all—to me. Oh, I tell you there was a wistful¬ 
ness in her face!” 



260 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“She loves him—her husband ?” 

“Yes—him only.” 

“Who is she?” 

The other raised one of his woolen-gloved hands. 

“Oh, I can’t do that,” he said. “If by chance you 
pulled out of this scrape sometime you might know her.” 

“I thought you wanted me to try to take a message 
back to her, old man, if-” 

“I know. But you’re wrong. None. I gave her the 
last message over a year ago. I tell you I mean nothing 
to her—just a rather soiled soul which could be fine 
enough to worship her and flit away. That’s all I mean 
to her. To me-” 

“She means a lot!” 

“Everything—all the best in me, Doug.” 

“You met her a long time ago?” 

“A long time.” 

“Longer than you have known me?” 

“Oh, yes!” 

“And kept away?” 

“Yes. She doesn’t even know that I still worship her. 
And she mustn’t. She must never know it.” 

The larger man put his hand upon the other’s knee. 
He said, “Well, poor old Bob!” 

“You’re the first person I ever told, Doug.” 

Douglas remained silent for a long time. 

“That’s why I want you to leave me here, Doug,” the 
sick man said in a voice with a rattle in it. “It would 
never be understood—never in the world. They’ve given 
me a bad name. They’d give her a bad name!” 

He waved his hands and squirmed like a man in torture. 

“It was on my mind all night,” he said. “Can’t you 



A Story for a Certain Lady 261 

see no one would ever believe the truth? They’d come 
looking for us when we didn’t get back to town by Tues¬ 
day. They’d come to the camp. Somebody would be 
sure to tell. Her husband would never believe her. The 
world would know and, knowing me, they’d say black 
things of her. Can’t you see what it would mean if they 
found it?” 

“Found what?” 

The white-faced man pointed towards the shore and 
the red spot which was the hut they had left at dawn the 
day before. 

“My watch,” said he. “They’d find it.” 

The larger man stared. 

“She gave me a picture of herself, Doug, when I asked 
—a little picture; it’s in the back of my watch with a 
word on it which the world would never understand.” 

He buried his white face in his woolen gloves. 

The other jumped up and began pacing along the rip¬ 
ples on the lee bank of the sand bar, glowering at the 
shore and the red spot pricked into it. 

“So it’s two against one, Doug,” pleaded the other 
man. “I love her. I’m fond of you, too. I want to save 
you both. Try to swim it, Doug. For God’s sake, leave 
me here. I’m gone anyway, I guess. Come here, old 
man. Give me your hand. I’m not crying. I’m all 
right. If I knew I wasn’t going to leave a smirch on her, 
I’d stretch out here and see it through with a grin. Yes, 
I would! I’ve been a lot of things I shouldn’t and all 
that, but I’m satisfied, if only you tried—and made it.” 

Douglas stood looking at the swirling water between 
the sand bar and the shore. Life was so precious l There 
was his own wife, too. This end would kill her also* 
And there was this other woman—the woman this 


262 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

doomed man had loved so well. But the water! It would 
bite the flesh, it would lay its stings upon every nerve, 
its tide flow would toss a struggling, aching, racked body 
back from the goal, its chill would cramp the muscles of 
a man and steal into his heart and twist his vitals. 

He turned around. The sick man was staring at him— 
mute, gone beyond expression by words, silent, like a 
pleading dog. 

“I can’t leave you, Bob,” he said. 

The other made no reply. 

“The cold!” 

The eyes fixed upon him were large in their setting of 
marble flesh. 

He turned towards the oncoming storm which was 
spitting its advance squalls towards him as if thrusting 
the tongues of menace upon the sand bar and upon his 
friend and upon him. 

With a gesture of sudden frenzy he tore off his hunt¬ 
ing cap and threw it on the sand, began to unbutton his 
coat and turned to look again into the eyes fixed upon 
him. 

He must enter the water free of all incumbrance, but 
the clothes he tried to pull off, stiff with salt and ice, re¬ 
sisted him. He drew the leather hunting gloves from 
his bleeding knuckles, trying to summon a fierce joy in 
divesting himself of everything, meeting the necessity 
of working open the buttons with his bare fingers. 

“Doug.” 

The other had found voice again. 

“Yes?” 

“God see you through, old man! Come closer. I think 
my voice is frozen, too.” 

“Yes?” 


A Story for a Certain Lady 263 

“If you get there-” 

“Yes?” 

“No one must know. Not even she. She doesn’t think 
that I—still have it—the picture. I’m nothing to her, 
Doug.” 

“I know, Bob. I understand.” 

“You will see—a peculiar, haunting wistful expression 
on that face in the picture.” 

“Wistful?” 

“Yes—a kind of wistfulness you never saw in all your 
life.” 

Douglas was pulling off his undershirt. He was 
stripped now. A flurry of snow swept across the 
sand bar, enveloping everything in a scatter of white, 
little darts of ice. It passed on, leaving the naked 
man with his muscles set into knots against the cold 
sting of the wind, his cracked and bleeding lips 
twisted with pain and his neck tormented with 
a weariness which no shaking of his head would 
loosen. 

“Don’t say good-by, old man,” said his friend in a 
hoarse whisper. 

“No.” 

“Because it’s rather better to take some things cas¬ 
ually.” 

“Yes.” 

Douglas, looking back when there was no answer, saw 
that the other man had lain back on the sand again. His 
fine, well-crystallized features were still suggestive of 
both sensitiveness and a certain weakness of character. 
They were upturned, as before, towards the heavens, 
white as a death mask. And the eyes, though again they 
may have seen nothing, were partly open, staring up with 



264 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

a strangely anxious expression at the smoky storm blan¬ 
ket in the sky. 

“Bob!” 

No doubt he had lost consciousness again; he made 
no sign and Douglas was now alone in this rotunda of 
glowering sky and thrashing sea—a naked man upon 
the center of a vast stage. 

He caught in a deep breath and with a hardening of 
spirit, mind, and body to the task rushed forward, crash¬ 
ing along through the ice-skimmed shallows and thrown 
ing his body prone into the deeper waters. 

For the first moment there was a sense of comfort in 
the change of elements in which his bare body was im¬ 
mersed. Cold as the water was, it did not whip and 
sting one as did the vicious lashes of the wind; cruel as 
it might prove, it was not fickle like the air with the air’s 
varied attack. He struck out, in the false hope that the 
battle would not be as desperate as he had expected. 

The wind coming from behind aided him in his fight 
against the set of the tide. As one squall lifted he could 
see the red hut a tiny spot on the beach but now for some 
reason appearing rather nearer. He was a good swim¬ 
mer; a powerful body was his. Now once having set 
forth, a confidence filled him glowingly; there was a new 
desire to live and a feeling of assurance that after all 
his suffering and danger, more life—life with telephones 
and hot baths and steaks and the sound of the Avenue 
and the glow shed down into the deep streets by the 
illuminated signs on high buildings—was to be his. He 
swam on, grateful to the spray which flung itself into 
his half-opened mouth and penetrated his nose, clearing 
the air passages and making all realization suddenly more 
keen. 


A Story for a Certain Lady 265 

He felt a joy in the power of his body, of his heavy 
shoulders and the thick muscles of thigh and calf which 
drove him onward. Once out of the lee of the sand bar, 
the waves tossed him roughly or lifted him upon their 
swellings, bustling forward by him, rushing on ahead 
of him towards the far line of cream-colored shore, 
where, as he could see, the breakers were piling up their 
foam. The cold water had begun to sap away from every 
pore in his body the warmth of the animal life within him 
but it held him up occasionally as there might be held up 
a prize which a victor was taking to lay at the feet of 
the land. 

He swam on, eager to live eager to reach his mark, 
determining, as he drove his legs and arms, that he would 
not turn his eyes back to the sand bar until his feet 
touched bottom on the shelving beach of the dunes near 
where the faded salt grass rustled and bits of bleached 
driftwood danced in the whirl of the wind. He was 
sure that measuring the distance by looking back would 
fill him again with doubt and terror. The goal! The 
goal! That was the thing! That was the pin point on 
which to center the will to live and win. 

The water, however, had its insidious chill. He could 
feel it now penetrating below the skin which had been 
rendered almost senseless, as if by a local anesthesia. It 
had begun to drag upon the muscles—much too soon, he 
thought. He thought it was much too soon, for he had 
come now to the tide streak where he felt himself slid 
along towards the south, his body turning instinctively 
at angles to the current, as he noticed that the shore began 
to slowly slide northward before his eyes like a strip of 
country seen from the window of a train gathering 
speed. 


266 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

He swam on, reflecting, with a curious hysteria of emo¬ 
tion, upon the grotesque, unbelievable fact that he had 
just left a friend to die and might die himself. So un¬ 
accustomed to this thought, he could not accept it. It 
came back over and over again but as often did his mind 
hysterically claim that it was not true. 

Just how far he swam before he felt the sensation of 
defeat can not be gauged. There was a dull unreality 
which had followed him like a haunting personality from 
the horrors of the night before and from the first real 
taste of the terrors of cold, and sea wind and water. Now, 
perhaps the breaking of the storm upon a sea already 
angry was sufficient an assault upon the senses to re¬ 
awaken him to fresh animal instincts of self-preservation. 
The blue-black depths beneath his white naked body, the 
white foam upon its surface, the thunder of the billows 
which rolled behind and began to curl and crash over him, 
the sense of the presence of hurricane wind, the cold 
that had seeped deeper and deeper into his tired body, 
spoke to him of a losing fight. 

At first this terror took form only in the shape of des¬ 
perate desire to live. It drove him to the folly of mad 
effort. His muscles groaned with pain, but he attempted 
to drive them faster and faster, lashing them with will 
power. The world of sea became a confused and con¬ 
fusing maze of oblivion. In an agony of fear he threw 
his head aside from a rising sea and a back wash crashed 
into his face, filling his throat with suffocating water. 
He swung over onto his back, thrashing with his arms. 

An onrushing wave buried him in depths from which 
it appeared to him he scrambled out only by the last ounce 
of effort in his body and into a world black, filled with 
driving rain and horrible winding, weaving, breaking, 
smashing walls of liquid terror in blotches of white, deep 


A Story for a Certain Lady 267 

green and purple. His legs, grown as heavy and stiff as 
iron legs upon an iron figure, sank below him. His head 
went under. 

He came up with lungs which had already begun to 
fail, in bitter pain, choked and revolting. He believed he 
was done for and tried to tell his body. But it would 
struggle so! It loved life so much! He was willing but 
his body would not quit! 

In the midst of this death fight he heard a quiet whis¬ 
per in his ear. Unrealities of this kind come to desperate 
senses. The voice was distinct enough—the voice of the 
man who had been left to die, talking in a tone of forced 
calm, cheerful and undramatic but plainly filled with 
anxiety. 

The words were meaningless to the swimmer. He 
heard them clearly but at the moment of hearing he failed 
to receive any import from them. They would have been 
meaningless to him even if he had heard them as mean¬ 
ingful words. It was the voice—the voice which could 
speak to him in the midst of a swirl of destroying chaos 
which caught his spirit, mind, and body into a saving at¬ 
tention. He found that his desperation for a moment 
was forgotten. And now he was swimming again. His 
body expended new, independent instinct to save itself 
and his will, suddenly summoned by this voice from 
somewhere, took command once more of his senses and 
agonized muscles, bringing their efforts into harmony— 
a general returned to his army. 

It was tempting to look back now. If he had done so 
he would have seen nothing but the thick of the rain 
and wind and the white hair of the sea. The sea and 
sky had been whipped into a dun-colored souffle and even 
the shore in front was only dimly visible in strange pauses 


268 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

of the wind. He wondered what he would do when it 
had ceased to be visible altogether. Not to be able to 
see the shore would be to swim frantically in circles until 
nature no longer could fight exhaustion and with a sigh 
the human body would sink, and later rise, to be tossed 
rhythmically towards the sky and caught as it fell in 
the supreme comfort of the hollow of the seas. There 
would be no fight without a sense of direction and now 
it was only when a great wave had swelled under him, lift¬ 
ing him, up and up, towards the low-hung storm sky, 
that he could see anything ahead! 

Then suddenly it came to his intelligence that above 
the hiss and roar of the wind and foam he could hear 
the distant crash and booming of thunder of the surf upon 
the beach. 

There was pulsing and pounding, amazingly like the 
pulsing and pounding within him. It was his tired heart, 
chilled, vexed, desperate heart. But it was like two 
hearts beating, one in each ear, pumping torturing floods 
of pain through his head and into his staring eyeballs. 
He swam on, doggedly. Waves smashed down on his 
white nakedness as they would smash down upon a tiny 
chip of pine wood; they rolled him over, sometimes toss¬ 
ing his legs out of their white teeth, sometimes swallow¬ 
ing his head in their jaws. 

To save himself no longer appeared to be the object 
of the battle. His body, as if it had separate thought, 
was attending to the hysteria of self-preservation. His 
will in distinction to his body found it clearer to act 
apart from the panic of self. It kept talking about the 
goal. It referred back always to the mission, to the 
pleading of the man who had been left behind—to some- 


A Story for a Certain Lady 269 

thing about a stranger, an unknown woman, who might 
suffer. It centered down to a watch—a watch left under 
a pillow in a bunk—to a picture. He was swimming 
towards it—towards a little photographic disc. 

Fate willed it; he would reach that disc. It was like 
a bull’s eye on a target. He was the arrow. 

He wondered whether this was a mania arising out of 
the exhaustion. How else could one explain why a man 
at the end of his rope should feel that Fate meant to see 
him through, that the woman in the little picture would, 
in the passage of time, come into his own life and be¬ 
come a part of something new and vital? 

He swam on. There was less power in his strokes 
now; his lungs ached; a cold numbness filled him as if 
he had been a wine sack into which a freezing liquor had 
been poured to the point of distension. He swam on. He 
remembered, in spite of all the pain and torture, the words 
of his friend describing her face: 

“A kind of wistfulness you have never seen in all your 
life.” 

This was in the disc of photograph with a diameter of 
less than two inches. He was going towards it, half 
delirious now—toward the bull’s eye of his universe. 

Suddenly a pair of arms came out of the depths and 
encircled him. No! It was a long hank of slimy sea 
weed, caught in its middle by his chest and dragging 
along both his sides. With a gasp of fright he struggled 
to free himself from it as if it were a tentacled tendril of 
Death. He could hear the louder thunder of the surf 
now. Curling wave-tops went rushing by him one after 
another, impending walls of green, green glass tumbling 


270 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

forward into crazy-quilted hollows of white froth. He 
was in the shallows again! There was a chance for him 
now! 

Not a nerve in his body failed to demand a cease from 
effort. Every one of them was screaming. He was 
tempted almost beyond resistance to become inert, a 
supine bit of riffraff to be thrown up by the sea. But 
there was the undertow. It would sway him back along 
the bottom, release him; waves would toss him from crest 
to crest and try again to hurl him onto the beach but 
the undertow, once more, would roll him back beneath 
the surface, as it raked down the shelf of sands. He 
must catch a wave-top and put forth the last effort in his 
body; as it swung him on its top he must add his own 
strength to its strength; he must swim like mad and 
dig his clutching fingers into the sand of the bottom 
when the water was retreating. 

He felt himself lifted bodily now upon a breaker’s 
crest and then struck out blindly, crawling, swimming, 
climbing down the hill of water which had towered and 
broken. He felt the drag of the receding undertow, half 
water, half rushing debris. Another wave lifted him. 
He gasped for breath and drove his cramped legs out 
behind him wildly. And now his clutching fingers dug 
into the bottom. The retreating waters tore by and were 
gone. He could feel the cold wind upon his back. He 
could feel the squirming sand beneath him. He crawled 
forward on his hands and knees, looking behind him, 
his face twisted by terror of the sea. 

More because of inability to relax from the struggle 
than from any effort of the will he stood up on trembling 
legs, swaying as a tall stalk of the rustling beach grass 
swayed. He looked at his hands. They were still 


A Story for a Certain Lady 271 

cracked and bleeding a little red tint into the water which 
was running down from his shoulders and dripping off 
his finger-tips. 

Having made this inspection, he glanced up the beach 
and began to drag his feet along towards the red walls 
of the hunting camp. It was snowing now—another 
flurry of white dry snow driven by the wind. Land and 
water was obscured in this slanting white barrage. 
Through the white snowfall, a pink naked man went stag¬ 
gering along the white beach like a drunken rooster but 
with no expression of any thought or emotion on his 
face. 

At the door of the camp his fingers felt around idly for 
the latch. It had stopped snowing, suddenly. The thun¬ 
dering breakers on the beach were visible, the tossing 
channel beyond was visible; through the murk he could 
even see where the sand bar in low tide and calm weather 
raised its white back out of the water. Now it was only 
a spot where waters boiled over an obstruction and great 
seas, surprised by the hidden obstacle, broke over it their 
walls of green. 

He was quite dulled to the meaning. Having lifted the 
latch, he went into the familiar black interior and kicked 
the door dosed behind him. Stupidly, he went bumping 
into the rough tables and chairs, knocking over a coffee 
pot which went clattering across the floor under a bunk. 
The matches were on the shelf by the chimney. He 
struck three or four at one time, dropped them into the 
stove, cramming paper and wood down upon the flare. 
The room filled with smoke but he could see to find the 
lantern and light it. He could not shake out of his head 
the goal—the picture in the watch. He snatched up a 
blanket, threw it around his bare shoulders, and staggered 


272 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

over to the bunk where the impress of Bob’s body was 
still upon the under blanket. Beneath the pillow was 
Bob’s watch. It had stopped; but now as he picked it 
up in his numb fingers it began to tick again in a greeting. 

The stove had begun to creak with the heat; he threw 
himself down into a chair beside it. Plucking at the back 
of the gold case, he succeeded in swinging it open upon 
its tiny hinge. He would look! 

But everything swung around for a moment and the 
vision was blurred. He could see that it was the head 
of a woman—this photographic disc. The idea came to 
him that he must not see her; he felt that he owed it 
to some undefined principle or cause to remain able to 
say to himself forever that he had not. So he plucked 
the photograph out of its place in the back of the watch 
and dropped it into the flames. 

Water! He saw the jug there. He snatched it up, 
filled his swollen parched mouth and spat it out against 
the stove where with a hiss it turned to steam. Then he 
drank slowly, purring and growling over it like an ani¬ 
mal. There were crackers there in the package covered 
with waxed paper. He broke it over his knee, snatching 
up the white squares, cramming them between his chapped 
raw, dry lips, letting a shower of crumbs fall upon his 
naked knees. The lantern beside his chair threw grotesque 
shadows of his movements on the walls. 

He thought these shadows were friends who had come 
down to search for him when he had failed to come back. 
They began to dance around, joining hands in a ring of 
joy, whirling, whirling and whirling like children in 
Christmas games. 

That was alL . . . 


A Story for a Certain Lady 273 

He leaned on one elbow. 

“Easy,” said the butler. “We ’ave sent for a nurse, 
sir. But your wife is ’ere, sir. She wouldn’t wake you. 
She came from Philadelphia this morning after we sent 
the telegram. I wouldn’t exert myself if I was you, sir.’ 

“Where was my wife?” 

“For a short visit at ’er sister’s. Don’t you remember, 
sir?” 

“I do now. I knew she was going somewhere over 
the week-end. Go and ask her to come here.” 

She came in with a rush of emotion and impulse, threw 
herself on her knees, and put her arms over him as if he 
were all life regained. 

“Oh, my boy!” 

“I’m all right. Don’t cry—dear.” 

She would. 

“Look up,” he said at last. “You are good to see.” 

He studied her, lovingly. 

“We are glad we have each other, aren’t we?” he asked. 
“We mustn’t let our good old companionship we used 
to have get away from us. Maybe I’ve had some lack 
of tenderness.” 

“Why do you say that to me?” 

He studied her again and patted her hand. 

“I imagined that I have seen on your face a kind of 
wistfulness I never saw before in all my life.” 


THE EYES OF THE GAZELLE 


Few, comparatively, are the Federal district attorneys 
in the United States. This makes it necessary in telling 
about the adventure of the girl with the gazelle eyes— 
whose story, by the way, is much more true than untrue— 
to conceal the identity of one of them in a makeshift way 
by calling him Everett Edwards Brevoort. 

If any think for a moment that this Brevoort showed 
the slightest trace of his Dutch ancestry in his appear¬ 
ance, they merely show their ignorance of America. 
America cuts men out of her own pattern, all forebears 
to the contrary notwithstanding. America made Brevoort 
tall, and not only angular, but also rectangular. He was 
so rectangular that he seemed to be just the sort of a 
creature that America so often likes to mold by tamping 
the soft, plastic material into the rectangles of streets, 
such as Wall and Nassau, for instance, or down a Chicago 
elevator shaft, or a Philadelphia mail chute. He was the 
adamantine, rectangular product of an adamantine, rec¬ 
tangular American city. He was the pattern of American 
success. He was the form of clear, cold, selfish thought. 
His head worked so well that he could raise one of his 
long fingers and argue an anti-trust law into an automo¬ 
bile speed regulation by pure logic. Twenty thousand 
dollars had meant very little to him as a fee. He paid 
that much for rent of his winter quarters. And, after all, 
when he was fifty a year or so ago, he was a somewhat 
attractive, middle-aged bachelor. His skin, for example, 
always seemed to have emerged a moment before from 
274 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 275 

bitterly cold water. His features were somewhat Greek. 
His ordinary smile was Satanic, and his “eye thrust,” as 
the young Harvard man who was assistant attorney said, 
was simply—what shall we say? 

This is a detective story, even though true, and there 
is something feminine in it, which calls for haste, but 
if one cannot have a picture of Brevoort, one will miss 
the point. The truth was that Brevoort was a curious 
tragedy himself. He might have had a Supreme Court 
seat, or even the Vice-Presidency, if it had not been for 
his record. 

A record at middle age, when the vision clears, is the 
confounded thing! To have been brilliantly successful 
in advising promoters how to keep ahead of the legisla¬ 
tors—which is not such a great achievement when one 
comes to think of it—is success which lasts until the 
plain people of inferior mental equipment stupidly insist 
in vulgar terminology that you have been running an 
expensive school in the gentle art of playing dirty tricks. 
Brevoort, along with others, said that he had “done the 
thing customary and current in big business and big 
law.” No one had ever outwitted him, anyhow. He said 
so to the man who had married the one woman he had 
wanted. He said it at the University Club on the eve 
of the Republican Convention, when the machine would 
have given him gladly anything he wanted, if it had not 
been for the way plain folks insisted, in spite of all logic, 
in looking upon his record. The windows of his apart¬ 
ment were high above the street, and that night, when he 
realized that his party did not dare even to mention his 
name for elective office, he would have slipped out of one 
of them as if by accident, if pure logic had not overcome, 
as usual, the coarser yearnings of his heart. 

This was Brevoort, who suddenly threw over all his 


276 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

old practice, all the lucrative clients, all the fascinating 
sway of the largest American affairs, and, to all intents 
and purposes, said to executive authority: “Here’s my 
ability. Here’s my logic. Here’s my law. If you want 
me to bring my gifts to the public service, appoint me 
wherever you dare .to do it. There has been something 
empty in my life. Perhaps I’ve lacked an ideal. Now at 
any rate I am ready to work per annum for a sum rather 
less than my club bills. Give me a chance at Service, 
with a big S.” 

So when C. B. D. was served with a warrant in the 
Industrial Shippers’ rebate cases, he had exclaimed invol¬ 
untarily to the deputy sheriff: “It’s Brevoort, of course. 
He served me once loyally at a pretty price; now he’s 
serving the government with the same perfect mind for 
twenty-five dollars a day. Always somebody’s servant, 
anyhow! All head and no heart.” The sheriff was sur¬ 
prised to hear so great a man so described; he was, how¬ 
ever, familiar with the prosecution of the Atlantic Fi¬ 
delity Trust Company’s banking-law case; he had seen 
the wife of Morton O. Parsoner, with red eyes, trying 
to get signatures on a petition for Parsoner’s pardon, 
and he had listened to the cross-examination in the trac¬ 
tion cases. Brevoort, he knew, did the Federal attorney’s 
job without need of blinders; he did not shy at old 
friendships. He had no prejudice. His was a terrible 
prosecuting pounce. And he played with witnesses— 
a jaguar with rabbits. Servant, perhaps; the devil him¬ 
self, anyhow! 

This was Brevoort who stayed in the city through 
the hot spell in August, working like a dog on some 
investigation, the subject of which no one yet has been 
able to guess, because even those who get the crop reports 
and the President’s message first cannot foretell the thing 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 277 

Brevoort will do. And it was on August 30th that Bre- 
voort pressed a button of the panel of his desk and looked 
up when Cooley, the second assistant, who does the small 
criminal work—the mail-fraud, immigration, eight-hour 
law, and postal-robbery prosecutions—came in. Bre¬ 
voort held a letter in his right hand and touched the 
tips of his stiff, white, clerical collar with the tips of his 
stiff, white, clerical, satanic fingers. 

“The Senator from this district writes me,” he said, 
letting his words fly like chips of porcelain. “He writes 
me about one Peter Schmolz, a pensioner—and political 
creditor of the good Senator. There was a theft of the 
last pension draft and voucher. The draft was forged 
and collected. What has this office done?” 

The second assistant looked nervous. 

“Janis has been on the case,” he said. 

“Janis! He considered it game of his size?” asked 
the man of little greatness. “What has he found?” 

The second assistant, being a young man desirous to 
please, imitated the incisive brevity of his superior in his 
reply. 

“Schmolz lives on West Twenty-ninth Street,” he said. 
“It is a boarding-house kept by Mrs. Kohlan, a Russian. 
The first postal inspector on the case absolved the carrier. 
Mrs. Kohlan admits that the letter was seen by her on 
the hall-stand. None but the boarders had access that 
day to the letter. Janis says it was stolen by one of them 
or by Dosia Kohlan, the twelve-year-old daughter of the 
landlady. The little girl admits cashing the draft at the 
bakery where she is known. This was discovered, con¬ 
fessed, and then substantiated. But it is impossible to 
discover who directed the child’s action or received the 
money from her. She could not have conceived and car¬ 
ried out the criminal transaction alone. Even the for- 


278 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

gery, which is awkward, probably is not hers. There 
must be a principal.” 

“Obvious!” asserted Brevoort, who did not even scent 
the interest of the case. “Whom does the child accuse ?” 

“Nobody.” 

“Nobody? You mean to tell me that Janis, with his 
bulldog, bulldozing, third-degree face has met his match 
in a twelve-year-old girl?” 

The second assistant reddened. 

“You’ve talked to her?” asked Brevoort. 

The other nodded. 

“It is a blank wall—a stone wall—a wonderful thing— 
that—that—er—child,” he stammered. 

“Hm!” said Brevoort, exuding the chill of pure reason. 
“Have I to go into a puny little matter like this ? Where’s 
Janis?” 

“Waiting to testify to the Cooperative Gold-mining 
Securities fraud-order case.” 

“Send him in.” 

Janis, who came, is a great man himself. He has a 
bull neck, fat jowls, sleepy eyes. The bull neck is on 
chunky shoulders, the fat jowls are on a broad almost 
criminal face, and the sleepy eyes are fastened onto a 
brain that works like a rat-trap. His whole appearance, 
however, is that of a lazy sealer of weights and meas¬ 
ures, owing an appointment to ward politics. And, by 
the way, he has one affectation; he wears tortoise-shell 
eye-glasses. 

Janis, like others of his kind, will not often tell how 
he does his work. Only now and then it is discovered 
that he caught a thieving postal clerk by pretending to be 
the father of the woman for whose love of gifts the thefts 
were committed, or that he picked out the murderer who 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 279 

had killed the postmaster at Hollinsworth by reciting to 
five suspects the scenario of the crime, step by step, while 
he watched their individual faces. “If not by one means, 
then by another,” is his motto, and he founds his method 
of nailing the guilty upon the theory that no human be¬ 
ing is a good liar.” 

“A man named Schmolz—” began Brevoort, looking 
up blackly at the inspector. 

Bill Janis ran his fingers around his collar, coughed, 
blushed slightly, and scraped his feet. 

“Well, why don’t you arrest somebody?” snapped the 
Federal attorney. “That’s not the business of this of¬ 
fice—to get evidence.” 

“Does your office want to prosecute, as it were, a 
twelve-year-old girl with pink cheeks and black pigtails— 
what?” inquired the sleuth, sarcastically. 

“Wasn’t there any one back of her? Wasn’t there an 
older person? Why don’t you make the child disclose? 
You’re a past-master of the third degree. What’s the 
matter ? 

Janis grinned sheepishly. 

“Sullivan, who first had the case, tried his hand, and 
Martin tried his,” he said. “He had the girl under ar¬ 
rest and in a cell, and tried threats, and Sullivan took 
her for a trip to some open-air theater and tried enter¬ 
tainment, and your young Cooley gave her a cross-exam¬ 
ination for two hours and tried flattery, and I tried 
threats, bribery, flattery, and cross-examination, and then 
some.” 

“What does she do?” asked Brevoort. “Cry?” 

“Cry, you say? Cry? She has soft brown eyes and 
smiling lips. She never cries. That’s what sands us all 
up, as it were. She laughs!” 


280 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

The inspector looked slyly at Brevoort’s scowl. 

‘‘We’ve all been wondering whether you could outwit 
her, sir,” he said, insinuatingly, after a pause. 

The Federal attorney sniffed. 

“Merely as a study in human nature, sir—as it were.” 

Brevoort snorted. 

“The men in the service have been sneering a bit over 
the story, sir—at me, sir. They say that if the Old One 
himself—beggin’ your pardon—had the girl in hand, 
something would come of it. Of course, it’s no work for 
you, sir. I know that. Only, of course, if all you got 
from her—wit against wit, as it were—was what we 
get—why—” 

The great lawyer pulled down his waistcoat. 

“I think I will look into this myself,” he said, con¬ 
fidentially. “It is interesting.” 

“Shall I bring the child here—as it were?” 

“No. You and Sullivan get together and dictate the 
facts to my stenographer. That will be all.” 

Janis hesitated at the door, brushed off his sleeve, lifted 
one eyebrow, and looked about the old room of the 
Federal Building, with all its bookcased walls and high, 
plaster-molded ceiling, apparently as innocent and un¬ 
concerned as a tourist from Keokuk. 

“Say, Mr. Brevoort, you never seen this girl, have 
you?” he asked, nonchalantly. 

The attorney shook'fijs square-jawed head. Thereupon 
Janis closed the door and stood outside in the corridor, 
with the point of his tongue appearing from one extreme 
corner of his mouth and one eyelid drawn down. 

“—, as it were,” said he. “And then ag’in -, 

as it were.” 

Of course, the real interest centers around the attempt 
of Brevoort to accomplish, playfully and as a piece of 



The Eyes of the Gazelle 281 

recreation, the mastery of the girl with the gazelle eyes. 
It was, he appreciated fully, an experiment in vanity. 
What more it was to be, though he knew it not on that 
Saturday morning in August, makes this story worth 
telling and reminds the conscience that there must be as 
close an adherence to the true details as exigencies will 
permit. 

On Sunday, then, Everett Edwards Brevoort left his 
apartment in an unpressed suit of clothes which he had 
laid aside to give to Jimmy Bernard, his personal at¬ 
tendant. Instead of stretching, as usual at the University 
Club, with its great hall of empty breakfast-tables, his 
broomstick legs took a long and brisk walk through the 
deserted business district, where the rap-tap-tap of his 
feet reverberated logically, and at last found them¬ 
selves under a table in the “Epicure Lunch Room, 
Open At All Hours.” However unaccustomed this per¬ 
formance of his legs, his mind remained as it had 
grown. 

True to habit, he bought a copy of every newspaper on 
the counter, and in five minutes had bathed himself in the 
ample wallow of print, a process which some years 
ago he named “Saturating the mood of the people’s day.” 

After finishing a perfunctory cup of coffee he went 
to the telephone booth and took from its stuffy interior 
the directory of well-thumbed pages. 

“Kohlson, Kohlsberg, Kohldig,” he read, half aloud, 
and moving a lean, precise finger up the page. “Kohlan, 
A. D., Physician. Kohlan, Mrs. B. Ah, she has one!” 

He stepped into the closet and delivered the number 
into the mouthpiece, not so much to, as at, the operator. 

Almost at once a voice answered. Even Brevoort, 
whose artistic sense is maintained by logic, felt the charm 
in this voice. 


282 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Well, I want to speak with little Miss Kohlan,” he 
said. 

“She expected you to call/’ came the soft reply. “She 
wants you to leave the message.” 

Brevoort rubbed his chin. 

“Janis couldn't have— Oh, no!” he exclaimed, under 
his breath. 

“Please tell her to come around the corner to the 
Epicure Lunch Room. She will learn something of the 
greatest importance,” he said aloud. 

A gentle, soft, scarcely audible, rippling laugh came 
back through the receiver. 

“Wait there for me,” said the voice. “I’m only a 
girl, you know.” 

The great man stepped back from the instrument, 
smoothed one eyebrow with a cool finger-tip, and smiled 
at the position in which a national figure found himself. 
He thought of Janis, however, and squared his jaw. 

Then he became the famous Brevoort-in-Action, suave 
but alert, smiling like a satanic majesty who might devise 
legal schemes for wealthy underwriters, ready to pounce 
like a hawk of a Federal attorney zealous in the public 
welfare. 

Not three minutes later, the door having opened, a 
twelve-year-old girl came up the aisle between the 
two rows of tables and sat down calmly, quite 
at her ease, directly opposite the great prosecuting 
attorney. 

Many centuries of peasantry were in her somewhere, 
yet her young skin was of the finest texture, her eyes 
were indeed as soft as the gazelle's and seemed always 
to be on the point of seeing some marvelous, unbelievable 
happening, and her features, though large and mature, 
were delicately turned, not unlike those modeled by the 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 283 

Greeks. Two braids of black, black hair fell far down 
her back. 

Brevoort observed her, thrusting toward her fresh, 
youthful countenance darts of fire from under his thick 
eyebrows. 

“What’s the matter?” she said, with a pout. “You 
aren’t nice to me. Don’t you shake hands—ever?” 

The Federal attorney shrugged his shoulders, extended 
his long fingers, and felt the contact of the warm, soft 
hand of the child under whose skin the blood raced with 
the merriment of youth. 

“You do not know me,” he said, mysteriously, looking 
about as if fearful that the walls had ears. 

“Yes, I do, if you please. You’re the man who 
telephoned.” 

Brevoort glanced up quickly. The brown, gazelle eyes 
were fairly dripping innocence. 

“Yes,” whispered the lawyer. “Only I must explain 
that I came to warn you.” 

“About the pension money ?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

“Why, aren’t you funny?” she inquired, seriously. 
“Everybody seems to know I had the money, and every¬ 
body wants to know what I did with it.” 

“It is a mighty serious matter, young lady.” 

She seemed interested; she leaned forward over the 
table, her red lips parted expectantly. 

“And I am a lawyer.” 

“Are you?” she asked. 

“Yes. I have heard all about everything from those 
Who have tried to catch you. But I can show you how 
you can be free of all trouble. You must tell me the 
story just as it happened, and you have my word that 
no harm will come to you.” 


284 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

The little girl leaned her head first to the right, then 
to the left; a little quirk appeared at each corner of her 
childish mouth. 

“Suppose I didn’t tell the truth?” she said, reflec¬ 
tively. 

“Oh, you must tell the truth,” said Brevoort, sternly. 
“It is always right to tell the truth—particularly ,to any 
one who wishes to help you.” 

“Do you want to help me?” 

The government’s attorney, taking up his crumpled nap¬ 
kin, wiped his mouth. 

“Certainly,” said he. 

Dosia tightened the bow at the end of one of her 
braids of black hair. 

“Do you always tell the truth?” she asked, suddenly, 
as if interested in the ethics of truth and falsehood. 

“Your poor mother-” Brevoort began, hastily. 

The girl nodded, and one might say the nod was ex¬ 
pressive of sympathy for a parent whose anxiety could not 
very well be allayed. 

“Your poor, poor mother-” Brevoort repeated, 

dramatically. 

The child’s hand touched his. 

“Don’t cry,” she cautioned. “Perhaps, by and by, I 
will tell everything.” 

“Tell me now.” 

“Well, I gave the money—the money—I got—to—- 
to-” 

“Well?” he exclaimed, thinking of Janis. 

“I guess I won’t tell,” purred the little girl. “I won’t 
—just yet.” 

“When?” 

“Why, when you and I are good friends.” 

“But we can’t sit here all day.” 





The Eyes of the Gazelle 285 

“No. But if we went in an automobile—” 

“Where ?” 

“Mother has gone to the Greek church. We could go 
into the country,” she suggested. 

Brevoort made a swift mental calculation of his cash 
on hand. 

“Why, that is nonsense,” he said, gruffly. 

The child arose. She brushed down her short skirts 
and adjusted her hat. 

“Where are you going?” asked Brevoort. 

“You aren’t nice,” she asserted. “I am going home.” 

“Wait,” commanded the great lawyer. “I will take 
you up to see the menagerie.” 

“In an automobile?” 

“No, the cars. It’s miles out there.” 

“Automobile 1” insisted Dosia. “I never rode in one but 
once. And that was the plumber’s.” 

“Oh, all right,” Brevoort assented, impatiently. “Wait 
here while I telephone.” 

The short of the matter was that the Federal district 
attorney spent his morning with little Miss Kohlan. His 
own car was at the shops. The cost of the trip in a hired 
machine was twenty-three dollars. 

On the ride up-town she informed him that she had 
recently given up playing with dolls, and that her school¬ 
teacher was in Europe, and that one girl in her class had 
a father who had become very, very rich by making ice¬ 
cream and funny little cakes, and that she liked kittens 
best of all animals. Brevoort, after they had reached the 
Zoo, endeavored to question her about who lived in her 
mother’s house. He wanted her to tell which of the 
lodgers she liked the best. 

“I like them all,” she said, looking up into his face 
with her velvet eyes. “But I like you better because you 


286 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

took me for this ride. I had a dog named Pickles, too, 
and I liked him. He’s buried in the back yard. I’ll show 
you sometime—the very spot.” 

“We mustn’t forget why I came to see you,” Brevoort 
had said, leaning toward her sympathetically. 

She shook her head, then looked up at the trees in the 
Park which shaded the path on which they stood, and 
laughed and laughed and laughed. 

“What is it now?” exclaimed the national figure, red¬ 
dening with anger. 

“The monkeys!” gasped Dosia. “They are so much 
like men. They don’t know so much as men do, any¬ 
way, do they?” 

“No, but I’ve seen some men—” began Brevoort. 

“The monkeys think they know.” 

“Yes.” 

“And our kind—like you and I—we think we know.” 

“Yes.” 

“Maybe, then, for all we can tell, the monkeys know 
more than we do, don’t they?” 

Brevoort smirked. 

“But you said they didn’t,” urged Dosia. 

She looked up at her companion and laughed again; 
then, as if she pitied him because he could not laugh as 
joyfully as she, her hand went forth, as they paused be¬ 
fore the cage of the South American tapir, and clasped 
his long, cold, white, clerical fingers. Brevoort started. 

“Have you got any wife?” she asked, tightening the 
clasp. 

The lawyer shook his head. 

“Any kids?” 

“No.” 

“Sit down on this bench and tell me a story,” she said. 
“Men without any kids tells the best stories.” 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 287 

“The automobile is waiting for us/’ he objected. 

“But I like you,” she answered, hitching up nearer. 
Brevoort could feel coming over him an irresistible desire 
to sit there in the warm, lazy sunlight. 

“Well, you tell me a story,” said he. 

“All right,” she exclaimed, wriggling with delight. 

“Once upon a time—” suggested the great man. 

“Once upon a time—” repeated Miss Kohlan. “Once 
upon a time there was a little girl who lived in Germany, 
and her house was built so if you went out on one of the 
balconies you could see lines of houses, all along a river 
running right through a city. They all had funny little 
balconies like those on the fire-escape, only made of 
wood.” 

“I believe I’ve been there,” said Brevoort, his eyes half 
closed. 

“Well, she grew up!” exclaimed Dosia, continuing with 
surprising haste. “Yes, she grew up. She had kittens 
and dolls, and her father bought her everything she 
wanted, because one by one all her mother and sisters 
died and her brother went away. And then she fell in 
love—so quick. And her father was mad. Oh, he was 
mad as a good one! And she ran away. And he said he 
wouldn’t ever speak to her again, and he was so mad 
he sold the house and he came to America like my father 
did.” 

“Then?” asked Brevoort, clasping his thin fingers over 
one thin knee. 

“Well, I forgot,” Dosia apologized. “She went and 
got married a whole lot of years ago, and they were poor, 
and finally he died.” 

“Who died?” the lawyer asked, squinting one eye per¬ 
plexedly. 

“The man she married. And she was old, too. And 


288 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

she hadn’t any money, and didn’t love anybody but her 
father, and she had loved him all the time, and she won¬ 
dered if he loved her; but she didn’t ever have any way 
to know, because he was gone. 

“Gone to America?” 

Dosia nodded gravely. 

“But she found out!” she exclaimed. “Somebody 
found out that her father was an old man—oh, so old, 
and in America. So she cried. And she wrote to him 
and told him she hadn’t ever done anything but love 
him. And she was so poor she couldn’t even go on a train 
anywhere. She couldn’t come to America. She couldn’t 
do anything. And she was sorry for what she had done, 
only it was too late.” 

“I thought you said she wrote a letter?” said Brevoort, 
exhibiting the instincts of a great cross-examiner. 

“Her father tore it up, he was that proud!” said little 
Miss Kohlan, holding up one finger to express a belief in 
the old man’s haughtiness. “Sure he did. Only he said 
if he was ever to see her again—why, then he thought 
maybe he would break his oath and just jump up and 
down.” 

“With anger?’ 1 ’ said Brevoort, flippantly. 

Immediately he saw the sincere expression of disillusion¬ 
ment and pain on his little companion’s face; he would 
have given much to have obliterated the effect of his 
words. 

“Go on,” said he, softly. 

“She died.” 

“Without seeing her father?” 

Dosia indicated by a drooping of her red lips that 
such was the fact. 

“Did you make that all up?” he asked, conscious of 
the imaginative faculty behind the gazelle eyes. “That is 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 289 

a good story. It is the best story I have heard for a 
long .time. But it is very sad. I would like to have had 
the daughter forgiven, Dosia." 

‘‘How did you know my name was Dosia?” she asked, 
quickly. 

“Why—I—I think—" Brevoort stammered. 

The little girl threw her head back and laughed and 
laughed and laughed. 

“You are all so funny," she cried. 

“Why, who do you mean ?” exclaimed Brevoort. 

“All old people. Let's go back. I love to ride in that 
automobile." 

Brevoort, when they had reached the Park entrance 
after a silent walk, directed the chauffeur how to make 
the return trip. 

“And now," said he to Dosia, “I want you to tell 
me the story of the money you took. You know you are 
a very bright little girl, and I like you, and I feel sorry 
for your mother, and I want to get you out of trouble." 

“Yes, sir," replied the child, respectfully. “Perhaps 
to-morrow." 

“To-morrow!" Brevoort exclaimed. “No! To-day!" 

“Let me think," she begged. 

The minutes sped by; Dosia did not seem to be thinking. 
On the contrary, she sat with her moist lips parted, gazing 
at the city pictures flashing by. 

“Well ?" said the Federal attorney, peevishly. 

“Sh-sh!" cautioned the girl. She pointed significantly 
at the chauffeur. “He mustn't know! It's a great secret." 

She hugged herself as if that great secret were con¬ 
cealed within her body, 

“Damn it!" exclaimed the national figure, under his 
breath. “We are here already!" 

She seemed to have read his mind. 


290 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“I must get out now,” she said. “Don’t you tell any¬ 
body where we’ve been, will you ? I don’t want anybody 
on my street to know. I want to whisper something to 
you.” 

Brevoort followed her onto the pavement. 

“Bend down,” came the command. 

He stooped. 

“I like you,” she whispered. 

It must be said in his favor that a real thrill of pleasure 
passed through the chill of the man’s pure logic; his smile 
was not the satanic smirk of his custom. 

“I like you,” she repeated, “better than the others.” 

“Other what?” 

The girl, delaying her answer, ran off down the street. 
She laughed merrily. Brevoort’s dignity prevented his 
running, ,too, but his gaze followed the child. She was 
making a peculiar motion as she retreated; she was rub¬ 
bing one forefinger down the other, which latter was 
pointed at him. It was the motion of one sharpening a 
pencil, and suggested to the Federal district attorney that 
an offense was being committed against the dignity of 
the Department of Justice. 

“Detectives!” called Dosia, at last. “Oh, you—detec¬ 
tives !” 

She disappeared. 

Brevoort watched the street comer for a moment 
blankly, as blankly the chauffeur gazed at the single actor 
in this mysterious drama who now remained on the stage. 
Then came the transaction of the twenty-three dollars, 
and the great man strode off, alone again, through the 
sunny streets, under the roar of elevated trains, past the 
locked doorways of the stores that were enjoying their 
Sunday emptiness, with his eyes on the ground, and his 
long, cold, clerical fingers stroking a jaw that was fixing 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 291 

itself tighter and tighter with every moment of meditation. 
Brevoort was making ready for his second pounce. 

At last he found a corner drug-store where the tele¬ 
phone sign was displayed. Entering, he called up the 
Sunday retreat of one William Janis, postal inspector. 

“Janis,” said he, “this is Mr. Brevoort. I know you 
are across the river, and I dislike to call you out to-day. 
At four this afternoon, however, I want this Kohlan girl 
brought down to my office. I want two uniformed men 
—regular patrolmen—who will stop in for a minute.” 

“I see, sir, as it were,” came back the answer. “The 
idea is fright, as it were.” 

“Yes,” said the national figure, trying to cling hard 
to the truth and his dignity at one time. “I have made 
an investigation of the case, and I would like to act at 
once—especially when there will be no other disturbing 
elements in or around my office.” 

“Very good then. At four—good-by.” 

Brevoort rubbed his hands; he planned a perfect lunch 
at the Union with the Collector of the Port; then, after a 
discussion of the silk-importer cases which involved a 
certifying consul at a foreign port, there would be ample 
time to walk to the Federal Building and meet the un¬ 
fortunate little Dosia Kohlan for the second and perhaps 
the last occasion. 

Her personality, however, had made its indelible im¬ 
pression upon the master of pure reason. As he listened 
to the vehement Rawlinson describing the methods taken 
by textile houses to accomplish undervaluations, he still 
found himself confronted by her picture. He could see 
the depths of the innocent, gazelle eyes, the mockery of 
her smile, her black braids of hair, switching about like 
the tail of a kitten itching with mischief. He could feel 
the touch of her little fingers, so warm with life’s vivacity. 


292 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

“Some day she will be a girl no longer,” he said later, 
pushing through the revolving door of the gray granite 
structure where the United States Commissioner, the En¬ 
gineering Corps of the army, the Secret Service, the Cir¬ 
cuit Court, and the Department of Justice have their 
offices. “And then—Heaven help the man who tries to 
make her fond of him.” 

Janis met him at the head of the stairs. 

“She’s here. We arrested her, as it were.” 

“Very well,” said Brevoort, his face settling into ltg 
hard lines. “Bring the two patrolmen into my office first 
—then the child.” 

He walked briskly down the broad, tiled corridor of 
the old building, pushed his way into the large, square 
room, and seated his lean frame behind the broad-topped 
desk facing the door. On his face was an exact counter¬ 
part of the expression with which, two months before, 
he had greeted Morton O. Parsoner, who had come in 
with the warrant in his fat, prosperous, trembling hands. 
His mouth was drawn into the same thin, cruel line which 
had made the great market-gambler cry out involuntarily: 
“My God, Brevoort, don’t look at me like that! Be 
human.” 

He looked up as the patrolmen, borrowed from the 
local force, entered. 

“Stand there, boys,” he said. “The blue coat is worth 
a lot to make the ordinary criminal understand that the 
proceeding is not in a court of equity.” 

He pressed a button on his desk. Janis came in, his 
broad, bulldog visage grim as Retribution itself, his huge 
fingers touching the elbow of little Dosia. 

The child had changed her dress since morning; now 
she was clad in white, and her slender, graceful forearms 
were bare, A little bow of blue ribbon held her braid 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 293 

in a knot on the top of her head. She seemed to bring 
a breath of cool meadows into the stifling room. 

Into Brevoort’s terrible glare of solemnity she tossed 
a familiar nod of greeting. 

“They arrested me again,” she said, sweetly. 

The two patrolmen stared at her. 

She smiled back at them, and then looked up over her 
shoulder at Janis. 

“Can’t you hold me without help?” she said. 

“Silence!” roared Brevoort. “You are a little foolS 
Such a thing as you have done leads to one result. You 
won’t think all this so amusing when you are taken away 
from your mother and sent to prison.” 

“But you will get me out of trouble,” Dosia answered. 
“You are my lawyer, and my friend, too. You made 
friends with me, didn’t you? You didn’t speak cross 
this morning, and I liked you.” 

“Bah! I gave you your chance,” growled Brevoort, 
“and I’ll give you another. What did you do with that 
money? Answer or I’ll—” 

Dosia examined a little garnet ring with scrupulous 
care. She seemed frightened and yet in doubt. At last 
she looked up, her velvet eyes widened as if she were 
striving to hold back her emotion. 

“Well!” bellowed the Federal attorney. 

The girl nodded. 

“Please send those two policemen away,” she begged. 

“You may go,” said Brevoort, sharply. 

The second patrolman shut the great paneled door softly 
after he had gone out. 

Dosia looked first at Janis, then at Brevoort. A little 
ripple of laughter burst from her lips. She made a child¬ 
ish pretense of trying to confine her mirth. Then out it 
came—the same wonderful, spontaneous laughter. 


294 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

Brevoort jumped to his feet. 

“Don’t be cross,” begged the girl. “I couldn’t help it.” 

“Then you do not mean to tell the truth?” said Janis, 
roughly. “What did you want those men to leave for? 
Eh? Eh?” 

Dosia reached out for the lawyer’s hand and clasped it 
tight. 

“ ’Cause my new friend didn’t want those men to hear 
me laugh,” she said, looking up at Brevoort. “Did you?” 

“No,” said the national figure, dropping into his chair 
with a sickly smile. “You are right, little girl. I have 
done my best to get your secret, and I suppose I must 
mark down my first complete failure.” 

Janis grinned viciously. Dosia observed it, and with 
the quick divination of childhood she realized the situation 
as it stood. She saw that Janis was taking a malicious 
delight in her new friend’s defeat. 

She drew closer to Brevoort and looked toward the 
postal inspector defiantly. 

She went further; she stuck out her tongue at him. 

“I like you,” she said to Brevoort, after a moment of 
silence. “So I’m going to tell you the truth. Only you 
mustn’t tell anybody—not a soul! It’s a secret. I signed 
the name on that piece of paper. I copied it from one of 
Daddy Schmolz’s letters. I know it was awful naughty.” 

“But the cash?” exclaimed Brevoort. “Who got the 
cash?” % 

The child, opening the locket at her neck, drew from it 
a little piece of folded paper. 

Brevoort spread it out on the desk. It was a post-office 
receipt for a foreign money order. 

“You know the story I told you this morning,” said 
Dosia. 


The Eyes of the Gazelle 295 

“My stars—yes!” cried the Federal attorney, staring. 
His cool, clerical fingers closed over those of the child. 

“Well, she didn’t die. It was Daddy Schmolz’s own 
daughter—cross my heart! And the money—I sent her 
the money so she could come to America—so she could 
come to Daddy Schmolz.” 

Brevoort stood up. His thin lips, which had not moved 
except to express strength of mind for thirty years, for 
the first time seemed to tremble. His tongue, which for 
so long had only known the utterance of words weighed 
carefully, now seemed to mumble incoherences. He looked 
at Janis, then at the little girl. He moved toward her. 
He put his arm about her young shoulders and drew 
her close to him. He glared at the bulldog postal in¬ 
spector as if to defy him to wish the child an injury. He 
looked down into her upturned face for several seconds. 
He searched the depths of the deep, gazelle eyes. 

“Dosia!” he said at last. 

His voice moved slowly with solemnity. 

“Dosia. What’s the matter with me?” 

For the first time in his whole acquaintance with her, 
he seemed to have penetrated to her seriousness. 

Looking up at him, she turned her head first to one 
side and then to the other, wearing upon her face a 
little scowl of pain and anxiety, showing in her eyes the 
hesitancy of a perplexed critic. At last, however, she 
nodded. 

“Well, what?” asked Brevoort. 

“You don’t love people enough,” said Dosia, with child¬ 
ish assurance. 

Janis retreated, closing the door after him. 

An hour later he opened it softly. 

The little girl had gone. 


296 Fresh Waters and Other Stories 

He looked about the old room, apparently as uncon¬ 
cerned as a tourist from Keokuk. 

Then his eyes rested for a time on the figure of Bre- 
voort, who was sitting at the big desk, his head in his 
hands. Janis hesitated, brushed off his sleeve, and lifted 
one eyebrow. 

He did not speak, however. Instead, closing the door 
softly, he stood outside in the corridor, with the point 
of his tongue appearing from one extreme comer of his 
mouth and one eyelid drawn down. 

“-, as it were,” said he, with a sigh, 

ag’in --, as it were.” 


"and then 




N0V 2 I lc%h 























